


Ships Ill-Lit At Night

by Rikku



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies), Pacific Rim: Uprising
Genre: Age of Sail, Alternate Universe - Age of Sail, Blood, Fusion of Canon Elements, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Miscommunication, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 10:48:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 51,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14377062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rikku/pseuds/Rikku
Summary: Hermann Gottlieb and Newton Geiszler are correspondents for years before they first meet, and then it is years more before they will admit to even being friends. Meanwhile the war rages, the monsters that rise from the sea surely too powerful to be fought with brittle ships of wood and sail.At least when the Fleet fights it, they must all stand together.





	1. Chapter 1

Hermann Gottlieb, scholar, scientist, at least temporarily sailor and when necessary man at arms, did not get along well with men of medicine as a general rule. He did not get along with this one in the specific, he decided, as soon as he entered the cramped cubby that was the surgeon’s room on _The Jaeger_.

Pentecost had promised a new doctor alongside the other recruits to fill the new gaps in their complement. While the captain was trustworthy, Pan Pacific Defence Fleet standards were not always exacting. A Fleet ‘surgeon’ may not even be a doctor. 

The bland but spacious operating area Hermann hazily remembered from his one other visit had been turned into some nightmarish grotesquerie. Glass jars of squids and fish and unspecific organs floating in brine loomed out from the walls.

“Just finishing up,” the ‘doctor’ hollered at him, and turned from his table with a flick of his wrist, sending a scalpel clattering across it. He rolled up his sleeves, revealing garish tattoos twining around his forearms and vanishing beneath his shirt. He had a bright, uncomfortable grin and hair tousled enough that it was entirely possible he’d neglected to bring any grooming items with him onboard ship.

Hermann decided at once that he did not want to spend six months onboard ship with this man.

But he never liked any doctor, had never gotten beyond lukewarm amicability with their previous surgeon despite nearly a year’s acquaintance. As he limped in he nodded as cordially as he could.

“Hello, my fine fellow,” the doctor said, wiping his hands on his apron. “Call me Newt.” He stuck out his hand. Hermann stared at it.

After a moment Newt said, “Not one for talking, are you?” Unfortunately his grin didn’t shrink an inch. “Want me to go through languages? I have a few.” He said something in what Hermann thought was Mandarin, and Hermann shook his head to pull himself back to the present. His mother always said that it was better to say nothing than speak rudely; he found it likely he would keep silent for the majority of his time in Newt’s company.

“Your … specimen bled through those gloves,” Hermann said, and then, saying the word as though he held it delicately between callipers, “ _Newt_.”

“Oh, so it did,” Newt said easily, and wiped his hand on his apron again, leaving a smear of – blue. “What can I do for you?”

“Nothing,” Hermann said, firmly.

Newt stared at him. “Nothing!” he said and then laughed. “That’s arrogant of you; how about you tell me what you came in for, I do my best to provide it, and we find ourselves a solution somewhere in the middle?”

Hermann spluttered. “Arrogant—No.” He clenched his hand tighter around the handle of his cane, and saw the moment when Newt’s eyes went to his cane then flicked over his body then back to his eyes: barely a moment, but visible, and he bristled. Doctors. “It is merely that I am ill-inclined to trust my health or treatment to a complete stranger. This is not aided when all I know of you is your horrendous taste in bodily decoration. Good day.”

“Sir,” Newt said, speaking sharper than he had so far, the smile dwindling down from his face like a candle ebbing. “My ornament—” He flexed one arm: simple tattoos, really, of the sort sailors often had, though more colourful. “Neither qualifies nor disqualifies me from this task. Only a fool would try handling something himself when there is professional aid available, and I am a professional.” 

Hermann, on the point of turning on his heel, twitched: a true point, though he would not admit it. “No doubt,” he said, curtly. “In truth the ailment scarcely needs your guidance. I’m not some ignorant sailor here bleeding from the gums and begging for lime juice, Mister – Newt. I can tend to myself.”

“Or I could tend to you,” Newt retorted, his eyes fierce and bright with challenge, “as it seems to me ignorant is exactly what you are – certainly ignorant of the least idea of how to let yourself be helped! Tell me what is wrong, for God’s sake!”

Hermann clenched his jaw, feeling his teeth grinding tight, and biting back on the word he wanted to spit out: _you_ , it was Newt, Newt was wrong, but that while true was not quite fair; Hermann’s head had been splitting in pain long before this surgeon’s berth was made so echoingly empty.

What was _wrong_? Seeing good men and women die and others rise to join their ranks and to die, and die, and still their foes kept coming, implacable, every few months a monster rising from beneath with the horror of true inexplicability, again and again, until no united Fleet seemed strong enough to stand in their way. What was wrong were the calculations that stuttered always into silence, the gaps still too gaping for him to map out their edges. Sitting in his room as the ship pitched and yawed in battle, as the cannon roared their battlecry, and being wholly unable to help.

Right now, in front of him, there was at least a problem he could shout at. 

“I would not confide in you were you the last man left alive on Earth,” Hermann said, and meant it.

Newt laughed. Abrasive, nasal, a spiteful laugh that shook his stomach. Hermann glowered at him and hunkered his shoulders, ready to get into it.

At that moment his captain strode through into the room, and Hermann straightened automatically. Newt did not seem to have his same respect for decorum, and just shot Pentecost a cheerful smile, an edge still present to his face. 

“Gentlemen,” Pentecost said, and he made Newt seem flighty and insubstantial with his sheer force of presence, a man wrought of iron and brocade. He had not spoken loudly, but still, Hermann, too, felt abruptly small. He swallowed, shifting his grip on his cane.

“Hullo, boss,” Newt said.

“ _Captain_ ,” Hermann hissed at him.

Newt lifted his eyebrows at him in a show of incredulity. “No, you creature, I’m the surgeon.”

Hermann would’ve nearly howled with rage had Pentecost not been there, had Pentecost not turned to him, then, and said, “Are you getting along with Dr Geiszler, Dr Gottlieb?” and his voice held a note of warning but did not even need it for the words to strike hard and sure into Hermann’s heart.

“Dr Geiszler,” Hermann repeated and stared at Newt.

 _Newton_. Doctor Newton Geiszler, his signature flashing in front of Hermann’s eyes now and settling over the man in front of him: of course. Of course.

“Oh,” Hermann said, nearly inaudible.

Newt wiped his hand again on his apron as if in a reverie, then winced, as his fingers brushed against the smear of blue. He pulled the apron hastily over his head, movements gone jerky and unsure, bundling it up in front of him and bunching his arms over it and staring at Hermann like a ghost had just walked in. 

His voice squeaked. “Hermann?”

Of course, right to his first name after two minutes’ acquaintance. Impossibly presumptuous, and yet. 

Hermann could not fit this into his mind, he could not, he could not be expected to deal with this on top of the ever-mounting avalanche of everything. “We shall manage,” he said to Pentecost, or something else muddled and vague, and then he turned and left because he needed to. 

“Hermann?” Newt called after him, sounding concerned, but Hermann walked away, walked fast.

Now as well as pained he felt nauseous, nearly sick with anger and grim curdled resignation: to have at last met his dearest friend, and hated him. He wanted nothing more than to be alone, was that not the point of this sailing business, to feel the whole expanse of sea around you, and to be alone?

But the one connecting cable between the madcap butcher Newt and Hermann’s own Doctor Geiszler was sheer stubbornness, and he could hear Newt running quickly after him. Inevitably he would be caught. He should count his blessings that Pentecost too did not follow him.

Hermann waited until he was at least closer to his quarters than the hammocks before he stopped, and turned, and Newt at once caught up with him; at least he’d let him set the pace.

“Hermann,” Newt said, and his voice was raw and helpless, like he was the thing he’d been cutting open on the table.

This would not do. He would not stand for this; could not. Never mind the tenor of their letters. Hermann gripped his cane and said, “Dr Gottlieb, if you please.”

Newt’s mouth curled down in obvious displeasure.

And now he had stated that boundary he did not know what else to do. Helplessly, inexplicably, Hermann found himself saying, “I did not know you were a doctor of medicine.”

He had never written of it: natural history yes, endlessly and endlessly, all specimens and skeletons until when Hermann closed his eyes he saw mounted fish and birds in between the lines and segments of the charts arrayed over his mind’s eye, filling in his gaps with fanciful flavour, _here there be dragons._

“I’m a doctor of a great many things,” Newt said. “You know that, Herm – I mean, _Dr Gottlieb_ ,” and his voice was sharp as a whip, only Hermann wasn’t quite sure which of them it was meant to be lacerating. “I’m happy to show you the papers later, all official. Right now though, Herr Navigator, if I could deal with this medical business? Just a conversation and then you’ll never have to look at me again.”

Outright untrue. “If only,” Hermann said, and Newt flinched a little.

That was unkind. Unworthy of him. 

“Life onboard a Fleet ship is like living out of the pocket of a hundred other men and women at once,” Hermann said, in explanation, awkwardly, and he did not know if it helped.

“This is not my first voyage,” Newt said, and then muttered, “I hope you don’t make it my last,” and then said, louder, as Hermann started to puff up in indignation, “Did you come to see me about the headaches?”

His forehead gave a pulse of pain as if in concert. Hermann stared at him.

Newt gave a self-satisfied little smirk, the genius proved correct in his expertise, and Hermann _had_ always found that aspect of his correspondent uniquely irritating.

“Knowing you,” Newt said, “I diagnose you with too much gazing at the stars. Try spending more time asleep in your bunk, at least a few hours a night.”

His tone was gentle despite their needling, familiar, and the step into that unexpected rapport might have been what made Hermann reply, “My bunk is the last place I wish to be.”

It was more open than he’d wished to be, and he tensed, waiting to be asked, but Newt just nodded. He glanced down at one arm and gave an odd kind of grimace, rolling his head. “I don’t sleep well either,” he said, and shrugged. “There are things I can give you for the pain—”

Hermann cut him off, there, better to cut him off there. “I wish to take nothing more for the pain.” Perhaps later he’d truly have to tell Newton his full course of medication, which was a mortification more than he’d ever expected to need in his life

Newt sighed, like he was tremendously frustrated with how stubborn Hermann was being, which, if he did know him, he should have expected. “Then all I can give you is my advice: sleep, Hermann.” He paused a moment. “And my company.”

Again and again, flinging himself forward and open, and Hermann was still too busy reeling to reach back. He could not get past the fact that Geiszler’s first impression of him was a cranky and blustering man too foolish to get a good night’s sleep, _mein Gott_. “Give me silence,” Hermann said tiredly.

And Newt took the hint, at least. Which Hermann had not expected. Newt bounced a step back on his steels, retreating, and shot him a smile: perfectly sincere, but not as open as he had been. “Onboard ship?” he said, with a hint of tease to it. “I wish you luck, friend.” And he dipped his head in a shallow nod and then turned, leaving.

Hermann tried not to stare after him. 

_Friend_. Presumptuous. And yet.

And yet they had known each other for years, written letters burning with intelligence and passion. He had thought, hoped they would be friends, he had nearly burned with hope for it.

He wiped the slate of his imagination viciously clean and stalked away. 

 

*

 

In the normal way of things their first meeting would’ve been their last, but ships were cramped and Pentecost was determined: they were berthed next to each other. There was little space onboard ship and Hermann’s room was larger than his rank should grant him, that his leg may not grow worse with the humiliation of hammocks. It seemed Newton too was granted some degree more space than the rest all crammed sleeping together, but not enough to be any closer to the captain’s cabin than could possibly be helped, and small wonder.

Geiszler truly did not sleep well.

He talked to himself, constantly. The first few days of this new sleeping arrangement Hermann bore it with a grimly clenched jaw, and then they were not on shifts that slept at the same time, or he had work to attend to, gazing up at the stars, yes, adjusting his charts by lamplight as the _Jaeger_ rocked quietly through the night. The night after that he got through by clenching his hand hard any time he felt tempted to go over there and punch him, and woke with an understandable ache in his wrist.

And then it had been a week, and Geiszler ranted to himself constantly still. Hermann lay uncomfortable and wide-eyed, listening to the lap of waves and the endless muttering.

“I must remember to preserve you properly, my sweet, if there’s any chance of a proper analysis next time we make land. Oh, I need to finish the letter to that professor, what was his name, never mind it, before next time we can drop off post. Hmm, and see if Pentecost can spare more candles. Is this spot a feature of your flesh or a mar in the glass? Best not to open you up at night, I’m sorry, to die of fumes would be a terrible end to my gloried career. It might be worth it if the fumes reached Hermann. No, I’m not writing that. Pretend I didn’t say that. Haha. Night on the eighth of June; visual examination of the viscera specimen, with comparison to the function of a mammalian kidney.”

Endlessly. 

Hermann rose with an effort. The pain was worth bearing for this.

The partition between their two rooms was only a thin piece of board, more than enough for the sound to carry through: closer to one room in truth, in two pieces. Hermann pushed through his door and took the single step sideways to stand in front of Geiszler’s.

He lifted his cane and rapped sharply on the door. The noise stopped, but nothing else happened, so he rapped again.

After a long pause, and shifting noises, Newton opened the door wearily. His room was as small as Hermann’s, or a little smaller, and of course he could not constrain his mess of papers and specimens to his surgery; of course. “I quieted the second you objected,” Newton said. He ran a hand through his already untidy hair. “Come now—”

“I have a mind to show you the constellations,” Hermann interrupted.

Geiszler blinked at him.

Now they were here looking at each other, it no longer seemed anywhere near as solid a plan as it had seemed to Hermann, lying there, endlessly frustrated with lack of sleep: anything that involved Geiszler not _talking_ seemed ideal. And he had written, once, professing admiration of Hermann’s astrological knowledge. Hermann had sent him back a starchart with his response, and Newton’s next letter included a tiny dried seahorse, elegantly curled. _I plumb the depths and you chart the heavens_ , he had written.

An entirely other creature to this apparition gaping at him in his nightshirt, indulging in midnight experimentation.

Hermann rolled one shoulder then the other, irritable. “If we must both be awake anyway,” he said stiffly.

Geiszler ran a hand through his hair again, and shook his head. “Of course,” he said, as though Hermann’s suggestion made any sense at all.

Any sailor or soldier knew to grab sleep where it presented itself, and few could be roused easily, but it was still common decency to keep quiet belowdecks where many would be sleeping. Geiszler did not hold to this, it appeared. “I’m glad to see you,” he said, an expression on his face in the dim that did not correspond with gladness, and Hermann made no response: he had been avoiding him, they had both been avoiding each other, but it was not tenable in the long term. Geiszler sighed, a gust of air in the darkness. They reached the ladder and halted, Hermann to brace himself, Newton to say, “I was disappointed with our meeting, and there’s something I wanted to make clear.”

Hermann tensed slightly. Was he going to have to force himself into reparation, into rebuilding his connection with the dear acquaintance who had sent him a seahorse and now felt fleeting as a ghost? Would he be able to?

“You’re an argumentative, bitter sort, determined to be right,” Geiszler said. “If that’s how things are, why then, I’ll answer in kind. Do you understand me? I am entirely prepared to return every bit of vitriol your bitter old heart can fling at me, vigorously. Scientifically. _Intensively_. Dare I say spiritually?” He thumped a hand on his chest. His tone was at least a little lowered, but no less intense for it. “Argue with Newt Geiszler and you get argued with back, directly, and tenfold. Don’t worry on that front.”

“Ah,” Hermann said. He stood there in the dark. He was not sure if this feeling was relief or sorrow, beneath the more easily diagnosable sheer irritation. “Good?”

“ _Ah, good_ ,” Newt mimicked. “Christ, you sound like a parrot with no purpose in life.” And then immediately afterwards, with no change in his tone, “You go up first so I can follow you and steady if need be?”

“I’m amenable,” Hermann grumbled, and hoisted himself grimly up.

Ladders, that was the worse thing about being on a ship, worse than the unsteady pitching and tilting, which he had grown used to by now. Ladders being ever-present he could never quite get used to. He had at least grown quite strong of arm, these days, hauling himself about.

He pulled himself up and into open air, night sky velvety-dark above him and air crisp with salt and promise, and crouched on deck: Geiszler passed his cane up to him wordlessly, then swarmed up the ladder quick as a monkey. He hopped onto solid footing, and as Hermann took his cane and shifted his stance, exhaling from the pain, Newton said nothing. So he was prepared to rip everything about Hermann’s personality and appearance to shreds except this. Hermann was not sure quite what he thought of that, so decided it was infuriating. 

A midshipman dozed against a pile of ropes, and otherwise the only other person immediately visible on deck was the bosun, taking his night’s watch as was his habit. “Mr Choi,” Hermann said in greeting.

“Doctor,” Tendo said cheerfully, and nodded his head at Geiszler as well. “Doctor. Is there much science out here?”

“Ha, ha,” Geiszler said. He flung back his head, gazing up at the skies. “More of Hermann’s field than mine.”

“Dr Gottlieb,” Hermann said reflexively. Geiszler whistled to himself; did he not know sailors held that to be unlucky? Hermann shifted his cane and stomped it on his foot.

“ _Dr Gottlieb_!” Geiszler said very loudly, and pained.

“Oh, speak a little louder, won’t you, there might be a few kaijus off in the Baltic that haven’t heard you yet,” Tendo said without rancour.

“Kaiju,” Newton said at once.

Tendo rolled his eyes at Hermann, and Hermann found himself smiling briefly in return; at least he was not the only one irked by his fellow scientist’s eccentricities. Newton nodded in a friendly fashion at Tendo, and wandered towards the edge of the ship. Hermann followed, slower. 

“Must we grace those creatures with any such fanciful name at all?” he said. He did not see the point of quibbling about pluralisation. “The name ‘sea serpents’ was once more than sufficient.”

Newton halted at the railing and breathed in an appreciative lungful of fresh air. “Sufficient, pah,” he said. “As if you can classify as merely ‘serpent’ any group of creature presenting so varied a group of traits as, for instance, legs, and in one more recent case a _chitinous coating_!” He huffed as if the very idea was blasphemous.

It really was his correspondent, the same old Newton Geiszler. Old, yes: Hermann had pictured him older.

“I’ll leave the taxonomy to you,” Hermann said. It came out sounding graceful, so he threw in a disapproving sniff.

“That’s the first thing you’ve said since we met that I could credit as being wise,” Geiszler said cheerfully. He rested his hands on the rail, and the pitch of the ship shifted them closer together, so his shoulder brushed against Hermann’s. Hermann tensed. Newton leaned further out, away from him. “What is it you seek to achieve on these journeys, then?”

Hermann breathed in through his nose, and out through his mouth, and said, “One day, to circumnavigate the Earth.”

It felt easier to fling his dearest-held hope out into the world in the forgiving darkness of night, under the kindly light of the stars, which were mostly clouded-over after all that. It should not have felt easier, considering who he spoke it to.

“Oh, naturally,” Geiszler said scornfully. “Predictable!” Hermann shot him a glare, to find Newton not even looking at him, but thoughtfully up at the stars. “Circumnavigation … I thought they already tried that; the fellow who discovered America. Well. ‘Discovered’ much the same way kaiju discovered our Earth.”

This was considerably more to deal with than any minor stamping upon his ambitions. Hermann shifted his grip on his cane, moved one hand to the railing, ran over his words carefully in his mind before he spoke them. “Did you misspeak, Dr Geiszler, or are you seriously proposing the kaijus come from anywhere other than our own terrestrial globe?”

Geiszler gave the same slight wince at ‘kaijus’, then grinned. “Why not, Hermann? There are – what is it – _there are more things in Heaven and Earth than dreamed of in your philosophies_?”

“Don’t bring the Bard into this,” Hermann said testily. Shakespeare deserved better than to be used by Newton.

“Ha!” Newt said, and shook his head, resting on his elbows. “But no, Hermann, if you really want to know. I think they come from under our own familiar alien seas, but not of their own volition. I believe they are sent.”

Hermann felt cold, though the night was not intemperate. “If I did not know you to be similarly inclined to myself in respect to religion, I would think you spoke of Leviathans and the end of things,” he said. This rung eerily familiar to what he remembered suffering through reading in Revelations, at the old school. 

Geiszler heaved out a long, long sigh, gusting with it. “You really are too inclined to religious metaphor,” he said, then, speaking over Hermann’s protest, “That isn’t what I meant, but you’re not too terribly wrong, either. Kaiju do seem like harbingers, like announcers of doom.” He mused, clearly taking it seriously, for once taking something seriously: pondering like some grand figure, barefoot there in his nightshirt on the open deck. “Like _precursors_ ,” Newton said.

Hermann was insulted by the accusations of poetry, but there were larger things to worry about. “From whence do you form this outlandish theory?” Hermann snapped, savage in his fear, and Geiszler fell uncharacteristically silent.

After the pause stretched out long enough for Hermann to be a little concerned, he shrugged and sniffed, and straightened out his neck as best he could. “As I thought: from nothing. You snatch fancies directly from the ether.” He poured scorn into his voice, because that at least was easy, not disconcerting like the shudder that ran up his spine at Geiszler’s words.

Newton shook his head. “I will prove this theory,” he said, “and you will not laugh at me then.”

Still nothing of how on Earth he had thought of it, and the Newton he knew was frequently an intuitive thinker, making leaps and bounds of thought, but this still made him uneasy. “I am not laughing now,” Hermann said. Newt smiled like it had been a compliment.

“But I didn’t mean to override you with talk of my interests,” Newton said, an evident lie, “especially if they have been troubling your slumbers – you promised me stars.”

Hermann rolled his eyes back, frowning up at the sky and its shifting clouds. “Very little has gone as we may have hoped,” Hermann said.

Newton opened his mouth then closed it, and glanced away.

Hermann sighed, and pointed up. “There, at least, though you will know that one already. Polaris. To commit the sin of oversimplification, it denotes due north. You cannot go too far wrong if you put your bearing on that star.”

“I’ll remember,” Geiszler said. 

Hermann snorted. Newt turned to face him, looking aggrieved. “I will! I know every creature in every clade that I have ever read of, you think I can’t keep track of one star?”

Hermann sniffed. “We shall see tomorrow,” he said.

Newt gave him a mocking little half-bow. “I shall welcome the chance to prove you wrong,” he said.

But tonight, for now, the serpents etched into his arms seemed almost to be sleeping; quiet, shadowed in the dark. When they made their way back, Newton’s hand very briefly warm on his elbow as Hermann fought with the ladder, when they had parted ways wordlessly in front of their respective doors, Hermann leaned his cane in its accustomed place and lay back quietly on his bunk, and from the other side of the dividing partition there was nothing. A blessed lack of noise. After a while, slight snores, tangibly less irritating than his constant chatter.

Hermann closed his eyes and slept and dreamed of brightly coloured snakes eating their way out through his maps, and Newton Geiszler, frantic as the papers fell through his fingers, poison dripping from him. Hermann did not put too much stock in dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller series: 'So we were ill-lit ships at night / passing close but all unknown to each other.'
> 
> Hermann's initial confusion between Newt's names is pretty much lifted from the very very good [the future's owned by you and me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14136084/chapters/32575983) by kaiyen.
> 
> An excellent age of sail AU is [Sea Swept](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1068207) by cypress_tree, and I would consider it the Comprehensive such fic from what I've read so far. I'm just twitchy to write this fic because I wanted to incorporate some Uprising developments thematically, and also it just ... kind of happened? So we shall see how it keeps happening! 
> 
> My very dear friend made some excellent and beautiful [moodboards](http://ramember.tumblr.com/post/172881759928/pacific-rim-age-of-sail-newmann-au-on-board-the)! (SORRY IT IS ONLY VAGUELY LIKE THAT)


	2. Chapter 2

The six months of their assignment passed without incident. In accordance to Hermann’s expressed wishes, the next journey he took with the Pan Pacific Defence Fleet was on an entirely different ship from Dr Geiszler, who went on some far-fetched quest for specimens down nearly to the Arctic.

But the attacks persisted, increased, increased by increment. Through his own small scientific influence he was able to be borne near wherever he wished, but none of the data lead to the hoped-for breakthrough. Instead Hermann charted frequency and location and formed conclusions he did not want to be true. The next time he ended up on the _Jaeger_ with Geiszler as a shipmate, he did not bother to complain to Pentecost. At times it felt the world itself was ending, and there were graver things to worry about than who he would fight the apocalype beside.

Something felt cut off, cauterised without his imagined Newton Geiszler to write to, and as time passed Hermann grew even more taciturn.

Two years after their fraught first meeting, five years into their acquaintanceship, Hermann was woken in the dark of middle watch by a loud pounding on Geiszler’s door. He lay awake, listening intently: Stacker Pentecost’s voice low but urgent, Geiszler’s answering mumble tilting up sharply in pitch as he comprehended whatever was happening. The sound of footsteps as they left.

Hermann, for reasons not quite clear to him, wrapped himself into his warmest coat, grabbed his cane and followed.

Even bundled up it was viciously cold, and he knew from bitter experience that the cold would bite far deeper abovedeck. Geiszler had insisted that kaiju lacked the required structures to survive at these temperatures; Hermann insisted that his numbers could not be wrong. Pentecost had heard them both out, nodded, and informed them there had been confirmed sightings far up north, so that was where they were bound. Newton hushed for barely a minute before clamouring into theories about body mass and fat and fur and layers of skin, and Hermann had tuned him out with the ease of long practice.

He did not have to brave the cold abovedeck. It transpired the two men were bound for Geiszler’s surgery, and Hermann followed them in.

A stranger slumped in the chair by Newton’s table, his hair dishevelled and a coat from the _Jaeger_ draped around him. His face was wan with exhaustion. Geiszler took one look at him and said, “Right,” and started washing his hands.

It was dim. Hermann edged his way in, glancing sidelong at Pentecost, and lit the other lamps, placing them so Geiszler would have better light. Pentecost glanced at him then focused on the exhausted stranger. “Steady breaths, sailor,” he said, stern but kind. The tension in the man’s shoulder lessened just a fraction, and he saluted.

Newton crossed back over, sleeves rolled up, eyes fixed on his subject. Hermann did not envy the stranger that focus. Pentecost said, “Mr Becket here was salvaged from a lone ship’s boat, with news of an attack. I need him well.”

“An attack?” Geiszler echoed, and rubbed his hands together. “When? How big was the kaiju? Any type of protective coating on this one?”

Becket stared blankly up at him, shivering. Newton actually went so far as to grab his arm, squeezing it as he exclaimed, “Did it breach? Of course it did, if you saw it. Did it have flippers, or legs?”

By then Hermann had reached him, clinging to the table for support, and he hauled Geiszler back. He was not rough, but Newton staggered back at his touch.

Hermann did not bother keeping the disdain from his tone as he snapped, “Geiszler. Right now we need a doctor of medicine, not a babbling theorist.”

Geiszler sent him a look of hurt and disgust, perhaps exaggerated. “I don’t remember asking your advice, Hermann,” he said, but his eyes sharpened. He gave Becket a once-over, eyes lingering on his hands. “Brought in from a boat? The coat was the right impulse, but wrong method; he is in danger of hypothermia. Help me get these damp clothes off, captain. Hermann, there are dry things in that cabinet, under the squid.”

Dismissed and then recruited within the space of half a minute; naturally. Geiszler’s air of competence was reassuring, however. Hermann did as he was bid, leaning carefully down as his hip screamed in protest, rummaging in the drawer to retrieve a plain shirt and simple breeches.

They had Becket stripped down now, and were towelling vigorously at his pallid fingers and feet. Hermann allotted himself only the few seconds it took to cross back to stare. He had never seen such a pattern of scarring, almost geometric, and seemingly recent, standing out bright red against Becket’s skin like a welt.

“We’ll get you near the stove eventually, but best to warm up by degrees; how is the feeling in your hands?” Geiszler said.

Becket gave his fingers a hesitant twitch. “Cold,” he said, then winced. “Painful. I hadn’t felt the cold, these last few hours.”

“It is good you do now,” Newton said, and held out his arm. Hermann deposited the garments onto it, and Newton began pulling the shirt over his patient’s torso, utterly unselfconscious about manhandling him so. “You can ask him questions now, captain, in fact that would be a useful gauge.”

“Report, soldier,” Pentecost barked.

Becket sat up straighter, even as Geiszler tugged the breeches up over his legs. “Raleigh Becket, sir, of the kaiju hunter _Shattered Anchor_ ,” he said. “She’s a re-rigged whaler, sir, complement of thirty. I’m a harpooner, with my brother, Yancy.” He closed his eyes and swallowed.

“A tot of rum for the cold?” Hermann ventured, largely because the man seemed to need it.

Newton shook his head. “He is dehydrated,” he said, and picked up a half-full canteen from next to him, holding it out until Becket took it from his hand. “Slowly,” Newton cautioned.

Becket barely wet his lips before turning his gaze back to Pentecost. “There was a fishing ship in range of the creature when it first emerged, sir, else we wouldn’t have engaged. The _Anchor_ dropped boats within half an hour of the first sighting and intended to stay out of range. We …” He fell briefly silent. “I took it down, in the end. I didn’t see what became of the other boat. The creature was very large.” He added, a grim note of stubbornness to it, “The fishing ship got clear.”

“So you got a good look at it?” Geiszler breathed, and Hermann shot him a warning glance. Newton shrugged at him, and crossed over to a small stove piled onto a stack of books, barely a burner.

Becket watched him warily. “Good enough,” he said. He grimaced up at Pentecost. “Biggest such one I’ve seen, sir, or fit to rival the biggest. Nose like the prow of a ship!”

Geiszler dropped a cup with a clatter and turned. “It did not!” he said.

They both stared at him. Hermann limped his way over, picked up the cup irritably and took over Geiszler’s interrupted brewing, seemingly a simple drink of boiled sugar.

Geiszler crossed his arms defensively. “Anything that submerges to such depths would not have a noticeable nasal cavity. You must have been seeing things.”

“Yes,” Becket said, slowly. “The monster that killed my brother.”

Geiszler bit down on his lip. Hermann shoved the warm drink at him, slopping a little over the side, but not as much as he would if he carried it over himself. Newton nodded, grudgingly, nowhere near enough gratitude for any of this, and went and pushed it into Becket’s hand, curling Becket’s fingers gently around it.

“They are not monsters,” Geiszler said, but quietly. 

“How long ago was this?” Pentecost said.

“And might there be samples?” Geiszler said, and he stared at Becket with a naked hunger that Hermann would have interpreted altogether differently if Becket were not now clothed, his scars covered up under coarse cotton. 

Pentecost gave him a sharp glance. Geiszler was approaching the limits of Pentecost’s tolerance, Hermann judged, and he was not surprised when Pentecost said, “More to the point, might there be survivors?”

Becket hesitated, then shrugged. His face was painted with longing. “I hope so,” he said. He chewed on his lip. “Realistically … Yes. It is not too cold. There is a chance.”

“I will be able to gather some useful data, either way,” Hermann said, to make the decision easier, because he did not want to think of anyone else lost and drifting, alone in a small boat in the cold sea. 

“And I,” Geiszler said, less helpfully.

“Then it is decided; we make for the last known location of the _Shattered Anchor_. Mister Gottlieb, chart our course accordingly,” Pentecost said, and Hermann nodded. 

“Raleigh, tell me, how did you manage to take it down in the end,” Geiszler said, leaning forward, and Hermann rolled his shoulders, grimly prepared to intercede again. 

He did not need to. Pentecost as he strode out barked, “Let him rest.”

Geiszler paused, eyes flitting up and then down as if only now realising how inappropriately close he was to the exhausted man. He leaned back. “Yes. Of course. I’ll see you settled by the stove, my fellow,” he told Becket. “The galley is always warm.”

Becket bobbed his head at him, then scraped together a tired smile. “I can draw it for you later,” he said. Newton’s eyes lit up.

Hermann took his leave then. He still did not really know why he had followed, though he suspected it was because any news late at night onboard ship important enough for the captain’s notice was very important indeed. He went above deck, hauling himself grimly up, to take his sighting for their new course.

They were fortunate the attack hadn’t been closer, and not only because it would not have fit the equation. This did, or nearly. When Becket was more coherent he could get precise coordinates, but he calculated it was within a league of his estimations, and that was enough to send a shiver down his back worse than the wind did. If all continued true they could be seeing another kaiju attack in less than four months. More and more frequently they came.

Hermann stared out at the dark seas, picturing them swarming with monsters, and shuddered again. This was far too fanciful. He would leave the theorising to Geiszler, and carry on with more useful work. 

Ms Mori had the watch, and nodded to him. Hermann nodded back, and made his way over to her. She dimmed the lantern, just a smidgen, that he might better see the stars. “One point to starboard for now,” he said eventually. That would do until the morning brought a more specific bearing. It was not too great an adjustment to make for their course, and worth it, for the sake of survivors and information.

“One point to starboard,” Mako called, her voice carrying clearly: she was only recently promoted to first mate, but she would do well in command, to the extent that Hermann was any judge of such things. The young midshipman at helm nodded vigorously back, and Mako said quieter, “I am sorry to have missed it.”

Hermann wondered if she meant the battle or just Becket’s retrieval. He hoped she didn’t mean the battle. She was too sensible a young woman to have a thirst for kaiju blood. “Mister Becket will be with us at least until the next port, I imagine, unless we find his ship in good repair.” He added awkwardly, “I am sure there will be chance for combat soon,” and wished it wasn’t true: it was, it was. One day the timing would be perfect, or perfectly wrong, and a kaiju would rear right up from under them, and Hermann – he feared what he would do in such a situation, and what he would not do.

“Would he talk of his strategies with me, perhaps?” Mako said, a little shyly. She had been head gunner before Pentecost at last reluctantly promoted her.

Hermann thought of Becket’s face, pale in the lamplight. “He has talked enough of calamity today. Later, perhaps.” He grimaced, sour. “He has had his ear half talked off beside, by Geiszler. It grieves me to work with such an incompetent. Must he prattle endlessly of his inane research when there is a sick patient right in front of him?” 

“Mr Becket is alive,” Mako said. “This seems to me the important thing.”

“Hrmm,” Hermann said, not wanting to outright disagree. The wind battered at his ears, whipped the waves into white peaks, the only colour that could be seen. Hermann looked up into the sky until he found Polaris, and comfort in the sight. He inclined his head to the mate. “Until the morning, Ms Mori.”

“Goodnight, Mr Gottlieb.”

He approved of Pentecost’s foster daughter, who had more than proved herself in his time in their company, and her politeness was certainly a help. One a few people on this ship could use to learn from.

They would need her, this war would need all of them, and it was war, now, no one could deny it. After Becket’s retrieval and the search that followed, there was always a little more steel in his spine, and urgency in his step. The increase in attacks, and, Geiszler insisted, in the power and capabilities of the kaiju, was no longer merely theoretical but undeniable. 

When they reached the location of the fight it was not only within a league of Hermann’s coordinates, but not two hundred yards away. And Raleigh Becket was the only survivor ever found of the crew of the _Shattered Anchor_.

 

*

 

Though hard to keep precise time at sea, when Hermann got his lamp lit and consulted his precious battered pocketwatch, he grimaced. Quarter to two in the morning.

Another knock at the door. Hermann glared up at it.

Geiszler’s voice drifted through the door, pitched low but still audible. Alas. “I know you’re awake, you wretched dinosaur, come out.”

Hermann breathed out through his nostrils, and debated the merits of staying in bed; of getting up, and clobbering him; of getting up, and dealing with whatever Geiszler wanted that he might the sooner go away.

He shoved off the thin blanket and hauled open his door in high bad temper. “In what respect exactly am I a dinosaur,” Hermann said. His cane was within reach: ideal for clobbering.

Newton Geiszler bounced on his heels and smiled winsomely at him, or something like winsomely. “You attract overly enthusiastic scientists?” he said and winked. 

Hermann stared.

Geiszler’s overly bright smile faded back to a grimace. “Your bones are in nowhere near good enough condition, how’s that,” he said.

Hermann nodded thoughtfully. “Much worse,” he said, and wrapped his hands around his cane. “I’m curious, Doctor Geiszler. Why exactly did you decide to end your life tonight?”

Geiszler snorted. “I cannot believe you have the nerve to call me melodramatic,” he said, and then dipped a little bow, giving himself the lie. He swept out one arm. “I invite you to drink with me, in the hope it will make you less unbearable.”

He could feel a vein jumping in his forehead. Much better to be back in bed, even if sleep was not coming. Hermann said through gritted teeth, “In case my refusals on the last two times you proffered alcohol were insufficient—”

Geiszler wagged his finger. “Oh, not alcohol, friend.”

“I am not your friend,” Hermann said, and reached for his coat.

They went to the galley, empty at this hour, with just the one lamp burning. A thick pot of some stew simmered on the stove, and Hermann was glad to be away from it. Newton, however, dived enthusiastically into the kitchen, and Hermann leaned against the counter to watch him wearily.

“I have it on Tendo’s authority that we have coffee, and as good a coffee as can be obtained this far from anywhere that grows it,” Geiszler said, ducking down under a bench. “Ground yesterday, but it should still be all well, yes? It is not as though coffee has a high rate of decomposition.” His tone had a sulky air. Hermann presumed from this that kaiju had a high rate of decomposition.

Geiszler come to think of it was still splattered with bits of blue from his work in the surgery. He was so much more honestly passionate about his specimens than his patients. Not that he didn’t do his work, Hermann had to admit. Grudgingly.

“There,” Geiszler breathed, and set a pot to boiling. He leaned against the oven in horrendously unsafe fashion and frowned across at Hermann. “Samples degrade faster than I can preserve them in any case, and my patients complain of the scent of ammonia; perhaps Becket’s sketch is the best I can hope for.” He grimaced. “Though it is not any good. He is no draughtsman.”

Hermann wondered whether to mention, again, that Raleigh Becket had only a month ago lost his brother and all his colleagues, that as far as Hermann knew he was no longer pursuing a life at sea, that to bring himself so soon to send information on the creature that wrought this devastation to not even a superior but a scientist with an interest was nothing short of applaudable. “Few people are,” Hermann said instead, because he did not want to start a shouting match at this time of day.

“His descriptions had some worth at least,” Geiszler said, and gestured under his face. “Becket describes tentacles around its chin, almost like the barbells of a catfish, though quite different in function. It is these that caused his unique scarring. Did you notice that?”

He certainly had not stared as much as Geiszler. “It was hard to miss.”

“Pentecost has the same scars,” Geiszler said, and Hermann stared at him. “Whether this damage is acidic or perhaps electrical, we do not yet know, and I think—” The pot started to hiss and bubble, and Geiszler turned to it with a start. 

At least there was something that could make him cease talking.

Geiszler whisked the pot off the boil, settled it down, rummaged with enthusiasm. “Here we are, here we are. I don’t know if we have cups; I hope you like coffee by the pint mug.”

Hermann watched critically as Geiszler careened the cup across to him, half-full of a tarry black liquid. It did not look appetising. “I am not … even sure whether I like coffee.”

Geiszler saluted him with his own cup. “A new experience for you!” He grabbed a piece of biscuit, then came round to the mess, settling down on a stool next to Hermann. Hermann a little reluctantly sat down as well. It looked as though this encounter would last for at least several minutes.

He inhaled above the cup curiously. The scent was strong, mostly bitter, faintly aromatic. He took a sip and grimaced.

At least it was hot. His mind felt brighter, though still smeared with weariness, like viewing a light through a dirtied glass. Perhaps he could pursue his work here, his private work, as he followed not Pentecost’s orders but his own initiative, seeking what he was sure he would one day find, a common point of entry, a cause. A route: a fast and certain route that ships may mobilise on his predicted coordinates without months of unsure weather to make that impossible. The light in here was better, at least. There were times his body needed to sleep but his mind refused to, taunting him with the work not yet done. 

Geiszler took a loud drink of his own coffee: his mug was full to the brim. He chomped on some biscuit, and wiped the crumbs carelessly from his face. “Oh, here’s a weevil!” he observed.

Hermann shifted back a little from him. “No one else would sound so excited.” He meant it to be bitter; did it come out too fond? He buried his face in his cup.

Geiszler grinned at him, oblivious either way. “They’re fascinating!” he said, poking his finger at the crumbs. “Hardy little creature. Good protein too.”

“Don’t eat that,” Hermann told him sternly. He knew people did, but at this time of the morning he could not stomach the thought of it happening in his proximity. 

Geiszler stuck his tongue out at him, the child. “It’s hardly your business what I put in my body.”

His next sip of coffee was so fast it burned his tongue, a rush of pain. “Ah,” Hermann said, “nonetheless. Not in front of me, if you please.”

“Turn around then,” Geiszler suggested. He waved his finger in a circle. 

Hermann gave him three seconds worth of staring, so that he knew how ridiculous he found him, before he did so, shifting in his seat. He sat looking at the wall for a moment, feeling ridiculous in turn. He took another sip of coffee, which did not taste so much of anything now, an improvement.

He turned back to see Newton grinning at him, chin resting in his hands. Hermann frowned down at the crumbs on the table. “You didn’t eat it,” he said, questioningly. 

Geiszler nodded, thoughtfully. “I might just like ordering you around?”

Hermann spluttered on his coffee, and his indignation was not made better by Geiszler’s unrepentant grin. He drew in a deep breath, sitting up straighter. “Of all the unprofessional, irritating men I have met—” 

“—I possess the most talent?” Geiszler finished. “I quite agree.” He took a swig of coffee and smiled dreamily at the taste. His hands were scrupulously clean, knuckles scrubbed red, but his forearms were stained with faint blue, splattering his garish tattoos. Every time Hermann’s opinion could not seem to go any lower, he was surprised again. “I would need access to a full carcass to test my theories about their organ arrangement, and of course the blasted things mostly sink, and poison our waters and do no one any good; from what I can see of their cell structure though, they are entirely unlike any other creature, even whales. Not that I have got that close a look at a whale,” he said, mournful, and longing.

Hermann took a sip of coffee without even noticing, and rubbed at his forehead. The tiredness was creeping back in. “Doctor Geiszler, why in heaven and earth do you think I would care?” Geiszler cocked his head, and Hermann waved a hand irritably at him. All of him. “About any of this?”

Geiszler shrugged. “I don’t; but talking it out helps, and you were awake,” and Hermann could not really argue with that. Geiszler drank some coffee and leaned back. He looked more tired when he was not constantly talking, as though even his boundless energy might eventually be tested by the times they lived in. “You get to be practically my captive subject, isn’t that wonderful for you? It is because you put up with me rooming next to you, mostly.”

As Geiszler took another silent sip of his coffee, Hermann digested this. He shifted his fingers restlessly on the counter. He was not sure, when it came down to it, whether he liked this quiet Geiszler any better.

“I honestly don’t know why you never asked to be reassigned,” Geiszler said, and shook his head. He was smiling faintly, but it did not seem a cheerful smile. He ran a hand through his hair, already irreparably tousled. “I got moved around a lot those first few weeks. Dragging me out for fresh air is kinder than any of the other prospective berthmates took my … habits.”

His constant talking, he meant. And the nightmares they did not speak about. “I did,” Hermann said. He curled his hand around his cup, savouring the warmth. “I asked Pentecost whether I could change rooms not two weeks after we were first berthed next to each other.” Privately he considered it impressive he had lasted even that long; and perhaps he had asked a few times since, as well, simply to be petty, as Pentecost had utterly refused. Pentecost had told him he was the first to ask merely for Geiszler to be moved, that the others had asked for him to be thrown off the ship. Pentecost had informed him, very firmly, that things would stay as they were.

Hermann was not the type of man who would argue with his captain, but there were times he wished he was. 

He looked across at Geiszler, uncharacteristically silent. Geiszler met his glance and looked down and away. “Oh,” he said. It did not really sound like anything.

Hermann finished his coffee, and made a face. The dregs at the bottom were silty and bitter, grainy. He could not fathom growing used to this drink.

Geiszler still did not say anything. Hermann grimaced. “Are you … quite alright, sir?”

“Oh, fine. Very fine.” Geiszler stood up, grabbing his mug. His tone was quick and prattling, and he did not look Hermann in the eye. “Talking has shaken some things loose, I am sure I can make more progress now. Thank you greatly for the company, dear old fool. I shall not keep you any longer.” And he was gone. 

Hermann stared after the vanished doctor and shook his head in disdain. He stood up, smoothing down the front of his vest, and took his mug into the galley.

For a while he stood in there, frowning. It was warm; besides, there was a thought niggling at him. A common point of entry. Some cause. The kaiju were well-adapted to their environment, as Geiszler endlessly insisted. It was hard to trace where exactly they had come from, and he had not succeeded yet, though he plotted their courses and the times of each report and even the weather. But if he accounted for still more variables, taking into account not merely the plain data but that the speed of each creature, like everything else, varied from each to the next …

There was more coffee yet, and Hermann poured another cup of it and went to his maps.


	3. Chapter 3

Pentecost called him into his cabin one day, and Hermann went in clutching his maps. Conferring with the captain over their course wasn’t unusual, though it wasn’t normally this formal. 

He entered and stopped dead. Pentecost’s room was oppressively warm, everywhere onboard ship sticky with heat as they grew closer to the equator, yet what deadened Hermann’s spirits was the look on Stacker Pentecost’s face, not one he was accustomed to seeing on their stoic captain: pity.

Pentecost, standing behind his desk, cleared his throat. “Mr Gottlieb,” he said. “I regret I must tell you that our primary mission has changed.” Hermann widened his eyes, clutching his papers closer, and Pentecost continued, “The _Jaeger_ was modified from a first-rate for this exploratory mission, and at our next port I will re-fit her with a full complement of guns as well as merely the long guns at prow and stern. We must be prepared to offer any kaiju a broadside.”

Hermann stared up at him then dropped his eyes. He shuffled his papers, shifted his grip on his cane, anything to avoid having to think too hard about what the captain was saying.

Quieter, Pentecost said, “This is the Fleet’s decision, not mine. Resources are too strained for any fighting ship to be left languishing. You can still conduct your research, of course, between missions.”

Between missions? An afterthought, shunted aside, when he had been so close. When surely one day he would be close. “They must understand,” Hermann blurted. “My research—”

Pentecost’s expression hardened, and Hermann snapped his mouth shut: he should not have contradicted the captain, he knew that much about naval life.

“The admirals will not listen to me,” Pentecost said, his voice heavy with finality, and he strode out from behind his desk, and opened the door for him. “If they will not listen to me, why would they listen to you?”

Hermann went slowly back to his day’s duties, taking the hourly sounding, recording in the logbook. The familiar tasks brought him little joy, even though normally he secretly delighted in the feeling of the thick leatherbound book beneath his hands, liked to run his fingertips along the notches of his Gunter scale. Today it all felt empty.

When he sat down to write his weekly letter to Vanessa poison flowed from his pen-tip, every bitter grievance and frantic hope he harboured within his chest. He wrote until his wrist cramped, and then signed it, and then sat back and reread the whole thing: an anxious, crushing, wretched document. Hermann sighed, and tore it into pieces. He hated the waste of good paper.

He penned her another letter, short, unremarkable, commenting largely on the weather and the state of the galley’s latest offerings. When he folded it up it made a parcel thin as a whisper. Vanessa deserved better than such a lacking missive, but she deserved better too than to be exposed to all the ire in his heart.

The other letters he had written since they last encountered a messenger made for a more heartening parcel in total, a thick fat stack of letters, and Hermann bundled them up in readiness. At least that was something to look forward to.

The very next day brought them into harbour. He knew he should take the chance to go ashore before they departed again, to eat food that was fresh and breathe air that hadn’t been breathed first by his shipmates; but the thought of the pain and work it took to get there, down to the boat and then the long row to the shore and then walking the stiffness out, and all with no set aim, depressed him. Hermann stayed onboard in his quarters.

He did venture out when he heard the post ship make contact, bundle tucked under his arm, anticipation speeding his heartbeat. Pentecost stood by smiling benevolently as the messenger distributed the post, the thick official letters for the captain first and then those for the rest of the gathered crew. Hermann waited, smiling and rubbing his thumb over the top of his cane, until his name was called, and did not even mind the botched pronunciation.

He went eagerly forward and stopped: a letter, addressed in Vanessa’s hand, yes, but only the one, and smaller than even his own most recent.

“Gotlib?” the messenger repeated, and waved the letter at him cheerfully. “This for you? And I can take those off your hands,” he added, nodding at him.

Hermann took the thin letter hesitantly. He had a foreboding feeling, a slow creep of dread, and tucked his own bundle firmly back under his arm. “I realised that I forgot to add my postscripts, I shall send these later,” he said, the first thing that came to mind, and he backed away.

He stood there as if in a trance, staring down at the slender letter. He should get somewhere private and open it, but he could not make himself move.

Then Geiszler was at his shoulder, in his space, the way he always was. “Don’t let it worry you,” he said, in what he must have meant to be a reassuring tone.

Glaring at him was comfortingly familiar. “I am not worried,” Hermann snapped untruthfully.

Geiszler gave him a sympathetic smile and patted at his shoulder. “It’s not like I get any post,” he offered. “I used to write to a lot of people, when I wasn’t sure how to make friends. You were the only one who wrote back.”

“Oh,” Hermann managed. His throat closed with pity. This painted a lonelier picture than he’d expected of the garrulous man he was forced to share space with. He had not ever really thought of it, but if he had, he would’ve assumed Newton to be the toast of any company he found himself in, with his ready wit and charm, even with his oddities.

Newton frowned at him, as if reading these thoughts on his face. “Mako is teaching me about guns,” he said, almost defensively.

“Ah,” Hermann managed, and tucked the letter under his arm with the rest. “Of course. That’s good.”

Geiszler waggled his head in the direction of the shore and said, “I’m headed in to see if I can rummage up anything interesting.” He grinned, on _interesting_ , as though Hermann was supposed to know what he meant. Hermann was very glad he didn’t.

Hermann hesitated, then said reluctantly, “I don’t suppose you could try to rummage up any tea?” Coffee did not very well agree with him, scraped at his nerves and burnt down his throat, and worst of all, he was starting to like it.

“No, I don’t suppose I can,” Geiszler agreed cheerfully, and when Hermann glared at him he threw off a salute and wandered to the boat.

Good: privacy, as he had wanted.

He went to his room and settled in there comfortably in his desk, and laid the letter out and sat there looking at it; then at last he broke the seal, and read what Vanessa had written.

Nothing entirely unexpected, or nothing he shouldn’t have expected if he had been paying attention, if he had been doing as a proper man would. She signed it _Love, Vanessa_. Last time it had been _Love, Your Vanessa_. He would miss that.

Hermann sat there quite blankly as the ship rocked quietly, comfortingly. He wasn’t sure what he was meant to be feeling. He thought perhaps he should cry about it, that a better man would weep. He was every inch as unfeeling and distant, as inhuman as Geiszler’s mockery made him out to be. _Distant_. Vanessa said he was distant, and she did not mean the waves and world between them. 

Hermann put his head in his hands, and left it there a while.

After a time the bell rang for the next watch, and Hermann shook his head, stirring himself. Food, or a sight of the stars, or some routine. All of those things sounded agreeable. He did not bother to put on his coat and wandered aimlessly out into the corridors without a destination. Perhaps it was fortunate Geiszler ran into him, even if it meant Geiszler dropped his bag, which was bulging and landed with an unpleasant wet squelch.

“ _Hurensohn_ ,” Geiszler exclaimed, and stooped down quickly to gather the bag with its unknown contents back into his arms. He turned, and his expression of annoyance faded into one of concern. “Hermann?”

“Very clearly,” Hermann snapped, and shook his cane. “Do you need a kick in the head, as well as glasses? Who else would I be!” His voice was strangled; hateful, hateful. He could not let Geiszler see him like this. He tried to step past him.

Geiszler took his elbow, a liberty Hermann would never allow in normal circumstances. “Come, sit down,” Geiszler said, tone gentle. Like he was an infant, or infirm. Hermann bristled, but could not think of how to fight it. The idea of being taken care of was painfully appealing, right now.

Hermann shook his head. “I must take the sounding,” he said, the first thing that came to mind. He did not need to, at all; they were still at anchor. 

Geiszler tugged gently, insistently at his arm, and like a sheep Hermann allowed himself to be led. “The master’s mate can do it, can he not?” Geiszler said, his tone warm and soothing. Very un-Geiszler like, really. “You were training him.”

“Young Suresh?” Hermann said. “Yes …” And then they were at the door to Geiszler’s surgery, and he was being ushered in.

Geiszler pushed him gently towards the chair, but Hermann straightened his jaw, glaring, and pulled free to sit down without help. Geiszler didn’t seem to take it personally, closing the door with a bump of his hip, and depositing the mysterious bag on a table as he walked across the room. “I shall make us some coffee to perk you up,” he said, and Hermann watched him a little numbly as he set to boiling water in his disastrous little apparatus.

Hermann leaned his cane more carefully against the table, and frowned curiously across at the bag, as that was the only new thing in here to frown at. His mind sought for anything familiar, and settled on irritation. “I do not think it would have killed you to procure some tea,” he said. The smell of coffee was soothing, like many late nights working and arguing, but he would not say that.

Geiszler set their two small cups down in front of the beaker and shrugged. “But I do not owe you anything,” he said, which was perfectly true, and had no need at all to sting as it did. He turned and said, waving a hand wildly, “I can’t abide tea, it takes too long. Sometimes I forget about it, and then I come back in an hour and—”

“Oh, dear,” Hermann said, and laughed a little. He could not help it, the laughing, and it was nice. He covered his mouth with one hand and sat up straighter, straightening his face out into a frown.

Geiszler looked at him and shook his head, and leaned forward to push the cup towards him. Hermann accepted it, wrapping his fingers around the chipped porcelain. He did not feel like drinking.

Geiszler with his own drink leaned against the table. He seldom sat, was seldom still. He took a sip of his coffee and sighed happily, and he did not say anything, did not ask, though knowing Geiszler he must be longing to ask.

Hermann could not, would not confide in him the real problem, but there were plenty of problems, if it came to that. “Do you know of Pentecost’s plans?” he said. “That we are to be a fighting vessel.”

“Yes,” Geiszler said, as soberly as Hermann had seen him. Then he added, “Perhaps we will see some kaiju at last,” and Hermann tsked sharply.

“Oh, honestly. You irredeemable fool,” he said, but he could not put any energy into it, and Geiszler looked at him with some concern.

He sipped his coffee, set it down, ran his tongue over his upper lip. “Is it really throwing you off this much, Hermann? I always thought there was nothing that could shake you,” Geiszler said. His mouth quirked up. “I am not saying that I thought this good, mind you.”

“Hrmmn,” Hermann said, neutrally. He glanced around the space, already packed full. “It is not as though you will not be seeing changes too.”

Geiszler hummed quietly. “I shall be busy,” he said, just that. He looked slightly longingly at his specimens, then shrugged.

“I will no longer have a proper room in which to work,” Hermann said, and Geiszler looked at him with wide eyes. Hermann looked down at the table. It felt like confessing failure. “I can keep my maps in my room, and most of my equipment, the glasses, but … there is no space for a full navigation room, we will take on still more crew, and the space will be needed for fighters, this is a fighting ship …”

He had never in his life felt so useless.

Not even back in his childhood, after the fall from horseback that killed forever his chance of being a worthy son in the eyes of Lars Gottlieb. For that was merely an accident of the flesh, and he compensated for it, more than compensated for it, in works of the mind. But now it was his mind that was found wanting, and Hermann could not bear it. Least of all when his heart was found wanting in the same bitter stroke. 

“Of course we will still need you, Hermann,” Geiszler said as if from a great distance. “Who else can insult me as eloquently as you do?”

“Nearly anyone,” Herman replied absently, and he looked at Geiszler and then looked away. Present in the back of his mind was the fact that Geiszler was performing the duties of a friend, not a doctor, offering comfort; irritatingly easy to ignore was the fact Hermann was letting him.

His eyes fell quite unexpectedly on a very familiar star-chart, pinned to the wall in the shadow of a bookcase. Hermann stared at it, and stood to inspect it closer. Geiszler made an abortive movement and then crossed his arms over his chest casually.

Hermann’s lines had grown more confident in the years since he drew this chart.

He stared at Geiszler, who glared down at his coffeecup like he had at last noticed all the chips and dents in it. “I …” Hermann stammered. “I can draw you another, if you like, I did not—” and he fell silent: he did not know Newt had kept it. 

“No, please don’t,” Geiszler said, quickly. “I merely keep it around to laugh at you. Something to amuse myself on quiet evenings.”

Hermann sighed, but the barb did not truly seem intended to sting.

He didn’t have the heart to pretend to more endurance than he had, and tugged the chair back out to settle down again, stretching his leg out in front of him. Geiszler’s eyes followed his motions, settled briefly on his face, then flicked away to roam idly over his assorted specimens. Hermann watched the heads of the sea serpents that vanished up into his sleeves.

“You said you didn’t know how to make friends,” Hermann said. Geiszler made a strangled little noise and drank his coffee very fast, and Hermann decided to push on. “What of when you were a boy?”

Geiszler wiped his mouth, leaving a smear across his sleeve, and set his cup down and shrugged. “I don’t really remember.”

Surely a man had to actively try to be this enigmatic.

Perhaps he had been hit on the head a few too many other times by other mathematicians he’d annoyed. Hermann rubbed his knuckles into the corners of his eyes and sighed. Nonetheless: Geiszler had done well by him today, loathe as he was to admit it. “I wish I could advise you, Dr Geiszler,” he said. “The truth is I myself am … less adept in the social sphere than I would like to be.”

“Indeed?” Geiszler said, with a creditable effort at surprise.

Hermann nodded, not looking at him. “I have many acquaintances, and few friends. I tell myself it is due to my focus on my work, but is it?” He shook his head, and swallowed, and looked at Geiszler, who was looking back at him frankly, kindly, with eyes that Hermann only now noticed were green, and perhaps this wasn’t about comforting Geiszler at all, and Hermann blurted, “I was affianced. Engaged.”

“Ah,” Geiszler said.

Hermann laced his fingers together helplessly and squeezed tight on them. “Now I am …”

“A free agent,” Geiszler suggested, with a misguided but valiant effort at cheer. “Able to court any, any lovely lady you should have a mind to, yes? Oh – oh, Hermann,” because Hermann could not help it, and was crying.

Of all the utterly mortifying things to do.

He put his face in his hands and cried in earnest, cried as someone who was deeply unfamiliar with it, mortified by every part of the sensation, the hot burning feeling behind his eyes and the dampness on his face, the catch in his breath, the noises. Hermann Gottlieb, crying, and in Geiszler’s sanctum: the last, worst place to be so shamefully weak.

But Geiszler did not seem to think so: Geiszler was stroking a hand along his shoulder, and saying, “Shh, shh,” and it sounded just enough like the waves that it almost helped.

Geiszler put an arm around his shoulders. Hermann stiffened, only because of how much he wanted to lean into it, and Geiszler shifted back, restricting himself to just his hand on Hermann’s shoulder, but gripping it hard, grounding. “It’s alright, old thing,” Geiszler said, soothing, meaningless. “Hermann, it’s alright.”

“It is not,” Hermann gasped, and he had to fight for breath. He heaved in air, struggling against the hitch in his throat, and Geiszler waited, patient, rubbed his thumb in little circles over Hermann’s shoulders: insufferable. “You liar, it is not! I have ruined everything. I have ruined everything with Vanessa,” and he buried his face deeper in his hands, digging his fingers into his hair, and said, quieter, muffled, frantic, “As I have ruined everything with us, as I ruin everything …”

Geiszler went tense beside him, but after a moment his thumb resumed its soothing strokes. “You haven’t ruined us,” he said at length.

Hermann gasped out disbelievingly against his hands, and though he was loathe to show his face he dropped his hands to the table and looked at him.

Geiszler’s face was drawn and concerned, and Hermann could not stand to see that look on it. He had wanted to lift this man up and be lifted up by him, as if any creature could live on pure academia. He had wanted a wife and a life and all the things he was meant to have. He had wanted a lot of things. 

Right now the strain between the two of them felt like the greatest tragedy, or it all tangled together, a spiked ball in Hermann’s chest digging into him. “I have ruined it, I have muddled it,” he gasped out. “I have muddled it hopelessly, and we will never be friends.” Fresh tears squeezed out from his eyes, and he shut his eyes tight, furiously trying to fight them off. 

Geiszler’s hand seemed to rest for a moment on his neck, but perhaps on accident, or Hermann imagined it, because Geiszler moved away then, and the confirmation of all Hermann’s fears made an awful knot rise in his throat that felt fit to choke him.

The only point of contact between them was Geiszler’s hand, resting lightly on Hermann’s shoulder. Geiszler’s voice firm and strong as if no fleet or sea monster in the world could naysay him, as he said, “We’ve always been friends.”

Hermann hiccupped in surprise.

A few tears still trickled down his face, hot and miserable, but the vast flood of them seemed to have stemmed. Something in his chest felt at once tightly wound and raw-empty, like the pallid blue of the sky after a brisk shower. After a while Hermann took out his handkerchief and wiped his face.

Geiszler snorted. “You’re a disgrace” he said – fondly? Did he mean it fondly? Fondly and disparagingly both, and that was a strange thing for a friendship to be based on, but right now Hermann would cling to any little bit of flotsam or jetsam that helped.

Hermann sniffed, and then sniffed again. “Your room smells of ammonia,” he said nearly fondly back.

Geiszler straightened, blinking, and glanced at the damp bag he’d thrown onto the bench. He swore. “I really must get those in vinegar before they corrode,” he said.

“You absolute horror, of course you do,” Hermann said, and Geiszler gave him a sharp look, and Hermann smiled at him. Stiff, uncomfortable, a crumpled smile, but Geiszler grinned back like they were co-conspirators, like they could be collaborators, like he had ruined nothing at all.

Hermann stood up and glanced at his coffee cup, still full; Geiszler perhaps would drain it later, without noticing, and the thought made another smile tug up one corner of his mouth, minutely. “I shall see you later, Dr Geiszler,” he said.

“Dr Gottlieb,” Geiszler returned with a nod. A little infuriating that he would at last treat Hermann with the proper respect only when pandering; still. Hermann nodded to him and went to the door. Geiszler called after him, “I am sorry about your office,” and then paused, and cleared his throat awkwardly; and was silent. Thankfully he did not mention Vanessa. 

“I am sure wherever I end up will still smell better than this hovel of yours,” Hermann said, crisply, and on that note as he exited felt better.

 

*

 

The moment he first slipped and called him _Newton_ was not remarkable in the least.

Hermann had just finished taking his sounding for the hour when Geiszler appeared on deck, clad just in his shirt and breeches and no shoes, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and what looked like a spare shirt tucked under his arm. 

Suresh wound the logline back into place competently enough, leaving Hermann free to fall in behind Geiszler, partly out of dread curiosity and mostly because he should at least make some effort to stop him from whatever madness he had in mind. That way Pentecost wouldn’t blame him for it later. “I dread to ask,” Hermann said.

Geiszler shot him a cheery grin, all teeth. He did not seem likely to be deterred from his course. “I’m going for a wash,” he said, and inspected Hermann. “I think it would do you good too, you know. In many respects you could use some refreshing. There is your hair, for instance.”

Hermann despite himself touched a hand to his head, surprised and annoyed. He had not expected to have fault found in this arena, when he groomed rigorously. “My hair? I cut it myself.” 

“Yes,” Geiszler said.

Hermann straightened to his full height, glaring at him. “I regret bothering you about your business—”

“Yes, you really should know better—” 

“—when this incivility is all I am rewarded with!” Hermann snapped. “Endlessly, you are infuriating, ridiculous—”

“Hermann, how often do you bathe?” Geiszler interrupted, and it was a ridiculous  
non sequitur, but he nearly shouted it. Things carried far onboard ship.

It was excessively personal: Mako, standing by the helm, turned and inspected some sails seriously. The brief silence that fell was perhaps only Hermann’s imagination but he spluttered all the same, feeling his face heat up. “It is hard—at sea—”

Geiszler shrugged casually, in his shirtsleeves like a buffoon, and said, “Sure, sure,” insultingly, so Hermann clenched his hand tight on his cane to avoid hitting him over the head with it. Geiszler grinned and dipped him half a bow. “Well, I’m going to have a nice wash in the sea, and you should join me.”

As though that would even help, with the salt water. Hermann was no fish and as it dried it would itch intolerably. “I think not,” he snapped. He hovered his hand over his leg, his thigh aching at even the thought, then shifted his hand back to try to hide the motion.

Geiszler either didn’t notice or pretended not to. “Stiff and starchy as you are, and comprised mostly of chalkdust,” he said, “I suppose you would melt,” and he strode off to the side to yell cheerfully at some of the deck crew in pursuit of being lowered overboard.

Naturally, because he was ridiculous, he succeeded. Hermann noticed with particular irritation that midshipmen Jinhai and Renata aided him, who Hermann had thought sensible. 

He glanced in at the log line, safely stowed, and made his way to the side of the ship as Geiszler was being lowered, to shout down at him, “Your insanity seems contagious!” His shout was whipped away by the light breeze. Geiszler had rid himself of his garments before he climbed down, and they were piled up on the deck in a shameful fashion.

Geiszler made an obscene gesture at him, and then once he was within a metre of the ocean’s surface let go of the rope and dived in. Hermann leaned forward, tensing, he could not help it, but Geiszler broke up through the surface almost immediately, then struck out through it, easily keeping up with the ship’s idle pace. His movements were quick and sure as a dolphin, he was lithe and naked, and Hermann scuffed his foot ill-temperedly against the pile of clothes, and sniffed, and turned far belatedly to his work. 

He kept half an ear out as he made his notes, but he did not need to. When Geiszler let himself be dragged back onboard ship it was hard to miss: “That was so bracing!” Geiszler nearly screamed, loud enough to carry across the whole deck.

Hermann twitched, and closed the book. 

He turned to find the sight even worse than he had feared, Geiszler dripping all over the deck, utterly ridiculous. His pale complexion had not fared well in the cold, though his tattoos stood out in stark colour; Hermann could see now that they crawled down his upper chest and around his hips, with none yet on his back or belly. He had not rid himself of his undergarments, fortunately, but even rolling up his shirtsleeves was a shamelessly unprofessional way to behave, and this – this - 

All were there to see it and to be disrupted, and young Jinhai hid a grin behind his hand, and Geiszler beaming cheerfully did not seem to mind or notice.

Hermann ran over to him. “Newton! Of all the idiotic notions to be possessed with, to bring such shame to our discipline!” He glared.

“I caught that!” Geiszler said and pointed at him, a sheet of water cascading down from his arm. “You called me Newton!”

“I’ll call you worse than that!” Hermann shouted, and he waved his cane in emphasis. Geiszler just laughed, and accepting his spare shirt from a midshipman towelled himself roughly down with it, then pulled his shirt on over his head: he stuck out awkwardly through the sleeves.

Of course he continued talking as he fought with his garment, completely unintelligibly. Hermann lost his temper, and rapped his cane against Newton’s toes. Newton gave a yelp – rather muffled – and leapt back and away from him, pulling his shirt down over his head, and glaring.

“That is no way to treat a colleague, if we’re talking of professionalism,” Newton said in a superior fashion. His hair was stuck to his head with damp. He bounced on his heels, and grinned. “A nice dip would cheer you up.” 

Sheer mischief radiated from his eyes, and Hermann tensed in true alarm: it seemed eminently possible for Geiszler to try to throw him overboard. At least then Hermann could petition for his removal. 

“You called me Newton,” Netwon said, and merely jabbed him in the chest with one finger, which was perhaps not better. “I heard it and will not forget. We are friends.” He seemed smug, joyously triumphant, and Hermann had the sinking feeling that he was entirely correct. 

“You are an idiot,” was as close to disagreement as he could come.

Newton shrugged and smiled. “Still.”

He had still not fully clothed himself. He stood there damp and ridiculous when he could have been eaten by sharks or kaijus or swept away by whirlpools, stood and declared himself _friend_ and was the most preposterous and frustrating creature Hermann had ever encountered. Hermann shook his head. “I still must calculate the lee, if you please,” he said, and turned his back. 

He already knew it, of course, but it was good to formalise all such things in writing, that the logbook could later be checked comprehensively by anyone and understood.

“Sail,” midshipman Namani called from up in the crow’s nest.

Hermann stared out to sea, and could make out nothing, though the ocean was still calm. He adjusted his glasses and frowned. In the corner of his eye he was aware of Newt pulling his pants on.

Mako cleared her throat at his shoulder, and he turned. “May I?” Mako said, as polite as ever she was but with such an air of command that Hermann had passed over his looking glass before he’d even consciously realised that was what she wanted.

She held it to her eye, staring out to sea. It was his night-glass, less degrees of magnitude than his day telescope but more transportable. “That sail,” Mako called up. “Is she the _Czernobog_?”

Namani did not have the carrying voice of someone raised to command, but she could certainly holler. “Yes, sir, and bearing in fast! A full spread of sail.”

“What could have possessed her?” Mako said largely to herself, and Hermann shrugged anyway: he had an uneasy feeling. With the kaiju threat to deal with, wars were on hold, with ideally no time wasted in idle squabbles and scrapping for prizes. 

Mako collapsed the glass and handed it back to him. Her face was pale but set. “Ms Renata, wake the captain!” she roared, and Hermann flinched back from the noise.

As a midshipman scrambled off he stared anxiously at the approaching ship, its white spread of sail now visible to the naked eye.

“If she is the _Czernobog_ , surely she would not attack us,” he said hesitantly.

“No, and nor would she flee,” Mako said, and she strode at once to Pentecost as he appeared on deck. They conferred low and urgent.

Pentecost fetched out his own glass and stared into sea, and shook his head, tucking the glass back into his coat. “Gottlieb,” he said, and Hermann made his way quickly to him, Newton silent as a shadow behind him. Pentecost’s aspect was grim. “Where do your numbers predict the next attack?”

Hermann’s shoulders straightened in alarm, though it made his back ache. He fought the urge to stare out to sea. “We are not within distance by – by several days. Two days’ sailing with the wind at our back. I had only an estimate, but twenty leagues at least!”

“It’s closer than that,” Pentecost said, tightly. He squinted out at the sea, then bellowed, “Relay flags, Namani.”

“Impossible,” Hermann stammered, and fortunately Pentecost did not notice him. Newton did, and jarred his shoulder against Hermann’s, not rough but not gentle.

“It’s possible if this one is faster than the last,” he murmured, and Hermann shook his head, quick, irritated, he could not spare the time to listen to him right now.

Namani shouted down as she read the flag signals. “They say _be wary of its jaw_ \- oh, obviously! Oh, it took out most of their guns – with _acid_? And they’re warning us of _mighty claws_ – obviously!”

Pentecost strode to the helm, and bellowed in a voice that carried all over the _Jaeger_ , “Bring in the topsails. Gun crews to your places!”

At once, led by Mako, the gunners ran to their cannon, sliding the long guns into place and checking the powder, loading up the ammunition. There was a swarm of activity around the sails, people tugging at ropes, canvas shifting, so the whole landscape of the ship changed utterly within what felt like a breath. Hermann clutched his cane tight in his hand and stared at the furious activity. 

In naval combat time was always either far too fast or dragged slow, and Hermann did not like this; time should not be so subjective. 

The _Czernobog_ was in clear sight now, the white triangle of its sails and below that the ship, and whatever horror followed in its wake could not yet be seen. 

Newton had swum and frolicked in the open sea with a kaiju not twenty miles away. 

Herman’s stomach contorted as it had not since his very first days at sea, and he made for the side of the ship. He clutched there and swayed, swallowing hard as he stared down at the water and thankfully did not retch. He thought he could make it out, now, a quick shadow of blue fast behind the _Czernobog_.

Newton was by his side, grabbing at his arm and yelling in his ear too loud and high-pitched, “Hermann, you damn fool, get down below!”

Yes; yes.

Hermann nodded to him distractedly and made his way belowdeck, quickly, quickly. Taking care as he went down the ladder took effort, and he felt an inconvenience as he pushed through the narrow hallway, those who’d been asleep rushing past him and up to their places. He slammed his way into his room at last, and leaned against his writing desk for a moment to breathe.

Up above the guns spoke out all together, a long rolling roar like thunder. To be sure it was a mighty broadside, but kaiju were not so cooperative as other ships in terms of presenting a large flank to be hit. But if they could even inconvenience it …

He pulled open the drawer and grasped his pistol, and with his cane in his other hand ran, ran back up.

All was transformed once again, deck clouded with rolling smoke that smelt of gunpowder. The air felt hot and itching. 

He had no hand free to shield his face, so coughed as he staggered to the side to stare out at sea with watering eyes. The _Czernobog_ was still coming on gamely fast, and he calculated it should be at their position in half an hour. But that black shadow had outpaced it and rippled toward the _Jaeger_ , from this distance looking just a wave but with something lying ominous beneath, like a shoal under shallow water.

All the things he might lean against, the convenient barrels and stacks of rope, had been cleared from deck to make space for the guns. Hermann laid his cane down carefully and loaded his pistol. 

Another broadside like a roll of thunder, the ship trembling with the bellow of the guns. Hermann squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he had covered his ears, opened them again with a shrug: no space now for wishes. With hands that did not shake he gripped his pistol. A small thing. He peered out. Most of the balls of that volley splashed harmlessly into the sea, but some seemed to impact into that racing ominous shadow. On it came.

Something gripped at his shoulder, and Hermann turned, blinking. He saw Newton yell a moment before he really heard him, his ears echoing. “Hermann!” Newton all but screamed. He looked anguished: had he been injured, already? Things could go wrong, with the cannon. Scanning him Hermann couldn’t see any wounds or blood, though the damn fool still had bare feet. 

Newton clutched his shoulder. “Hermann! What are you going to do with a pistol? You can’t do anything here!”

It resolved: Newton was not injured, merely maddening. Hermann took half a step back and coldly shrugged off his grip. He tried not to think how small the gun felt in his hand. “Nor can you, doctor,” he said. 

The wind rose, parting the clouds of gunsmoke. Newton blinked and rubbed a hand over his face, smeared grey with smoke, and stared helplessly out. The creature was half a mile away and bearing in fast, far too fast, and as it turned out kaiju did not move how Hermann expected aquatic creatures to move. This one was lumpen and vast, and seemed to dig through the waves with enormous front limbs: more simian, or mole-like? Useless to categorise, but even their long guns would barely feel like grapeshot to this monster. It was the size of an island. Hermann’s hand drooped.

Newton stammered, “I – I can tell them where to hit, I can—”

Mako stepped from the smoke like a wraith, face smoke-stained and eyes dark. “We know where to hit them,” she said crisply. “Get below, doctor, to help the wounded.” So already there were wounded.

Newton just stared helplessly at her, then glanced out at the oncoming beast. Three hundred metres now, too close, too close. Hermann tucked his pistol haphazardly into his pants and grabbed roughly at Newton’s shoulder, leaning on him as he hauled him to the hatch.

Newton allowed himself to be manhandled until they reached the hatch, then crouched by it as Hermann dropped a little too hastily down it, and passed his cane after him. Hermann bared his teeth up at him.

“The kaiju will manage without you,” he snapped.

Wonder upon wonders, Newton dropped down the ladder after him. “That isn’t – that’s not it,” he said, looking defensive, and angry, and at least his quarrelsome nature could be used to get him to do his damn job. As Newton brushed past him the whole ship shook, as a ship would when striking rocks or crashing into shore; but it was not that, not that.

Hermann hit hard against the wall, reeled, gripped tight to his cane and senses and followed on Newton’s heels. There was no one in the surgery yet, and Newton quickly lit the lamps. The ship shook once more as Hermann ducked in, and he had to exert all his effort to keep from falling. Newton rocked easy with the motion, reaching out with one hand to steady his instrument bag. 

Newton said conversationally, “I wish to Hell young Ryoichi had not taken his leave back in Manila. Hermann?”

Just his name, but Newton’s gaze was quick, anxious, and direct. 

“I am here, and may as well be of use somewhere,” Hermann said, swallowing down his bitterness. 

The ship rocked again. A bottled something, squid or cuttlefish, swayed off the shelf and thunked hard against the floor but did not shatter. 

A sailor Hermann did not know by name crashed through the door, clutching powderburned fingers stained with black, and Geiszler suffered an abrupt paradigm shift: he became all at once quite competent.

“Bandages,” he said, and set a bucket of water to boiling as he hauled the other bucket forward, sniffed at it and held it out to the sailor. “Submerge your hand for five minutes and five minutes only, and then I will bandage it,” and Hermann handed him a wad of clean cloth, which he damped carefully and dabbed at the wound. “You must try not to irritate it—”

Another crewman staggered in with a two-inch splinter of wood sticking out of their arm, blood violently red underneath. Hermann ushered them to a seat, murmured soothing nonsense that the doctor would be there soon. 

Newton strode past him and inspected the damage and said, “Hermann—” then stopped as Hermann dropped the forceps into his hand. His mind needed something to do, and anticipating needs, predicting possibilities, was at least something. He went to get the boiled water.

He tucked his cane under the bench, and as the bottled squid rolled past him he kicked it under too for good measure. He could make do in these close quarters with benches and surfaces, better than he could on deck, anyhow, and at least in this violent pitching and yawing, the ship rolling with broadsides and shuddering as it was struck, they needs must all stagger like drunkards. 

All was rush and blood and chaos, the ship trembling, at one point the ceiling above their heads rattling like it would fall in on them. A steady stream of injuries made their way into Newton’s care, powderburns and a few cuts, and then another crewmember struck with a splinter, this a five-inch stick of jagged wood jutting out from her belly. 

Hermann held her down as Newton extracted the fragment, held her down with his shoulders trembling from the effort as Geiszler plucked out the last few bits of sawdust or scrap from the wound, held her down when she convulsed as he drenched it all in alcohol. She passed out then, and did not have to endure it as Newton with a small needle and thin line of thread quickly and calmly stitched it all back up again as the ship shivered, shuddered, tossed.

After what felt like hours or minutes, too frantic a time for Hermann to clean his hands and consult his watch, one roll of gunfire was met with an answering rumble, a little quieter, a welcome peal. The _Czernobog_ had arrived, and still had at least some cannon. Hermann leaned against the wall. 

The fighting did not stop then, the ship shook once more as the kaiju perhaps rammed it, or who knew what, and the guns fired again and then more rapid, singly, out of sync, and the _Czernobog_ ’s heavier iron rumbled out near constantly, and Hermann did not have time to notice, he was busy, and Newton was very very busy. But gradually the flood of injured sailors slowed to a steady trickle, and a few minutes after that Hermann realised the gunfire had stopped.

He was red up to his elbows by this point. Newton was too, but he looked as natural and at ease in gory red sleeves and scarlet-stained apron as he had at frolic in the surf. Newton tied off a bandage, then paused, glancing up at Hermann, eyes still analytical behind his glasses. He straightened and waved his patient off, and once they were out said, “Sit down. You have been running very much this past hour.”

Hermann could ignore a colleague’s advice but not a doctor’s orders, and this time he was not inclined to. His hip was a burning star of pain, radiating out through his body. “I am quite well,” he said, and fumbled out the stool and sat heavily down.

He closed his eyes, just for a moment. Some of the pressure eased.

He could hear Newton moving around, setting water to boil again. Then a slosh, as something was set down next to him. “Wash your hands, you fool thing,” Newton said, and strode off to the other side of the room: from the smell of it he was not doing any necessary medical or hygienic procedure at all, but making coffee. “You make about as good a loblolly boy as I would a master’s mate.”

“More than adequate then,” Hermann said, breathing in the strong coffee smell. “You have tremendously steady hands.”

He opened his eyes to see Newton looking flushed and pleased. _Pleased with himself_ , Hermann corrected in his mind. It was certainly not in the least endearing. 

Newton poured a measure into his cup, pushed it over, drank from his own: he had not washed his own hands yet, Hermann noticed. At that Hermann sighed, heavily, and dipped his hands in the water, scrubbing them. 

He compartmentalised the last half hour’s work, cataloguing it away. He tidied the memories into a box like folding clothes into his sea-chest, so he would not be disconcerted later to suddenly remember his crewmate’s shoulders heaving under his grip as Newton dug into her torso, or the sight of red peeling blisters from powderburn. The _Jaeger_ was a fighting ship, a fighting crew, and he would be wise to get used to this. Especially if he could not help.

Newton wiped his hands restlessly on his apron, drank some coffee, put his cup down. He paced. “Do you think they kept any piece of it?” he said, glancing up. “I had better go up. Well, I should stay here a while longer in case people suddenly wake from battle haze and realise their head has been hanging off in two pieces this whole time, but after that. Those brutes would just let it sink and let us learn nothing from what this cost us—” 

The coffee was burnt, and looking at the bloodstains on Newton’s hands made him feel ill. “Newton,” Hermann ground out. “I do not care.” He fetched his cane and walked slowly out. 

All the aches he had not felt during the battle seemed to strike him all at once, collaborating against him in most underhanded fashion. He fell into bed and slept like a dead man.

At least until he was woken up, not too late but not too early either, by his off-the-head estimate of the motion of the ship partway through first or middle watch. It was not chance that woke him or nightmares, or not nightmares of his own, in any case. Newton’s familiar whimpers and small cries of fear were easy to hear through the thin wall. Hermann lay awake for barely the time it took for the world to make itself clear to him, and then pulled himself up. His muscles screamed in protest. He gritted his teeth: his body was not the one in charge here.

It was dark outside, and quiet, and Hermann kept his movements slow and careful. He opened Newton’s door and was not surprised to see Newton curled up on top of his bed, arms wrapped around his legs, with one small lamp burning. He had clearly been trying to sleep, and just as clearly sleep had not come kindly.

Hermann stood there, and after a moment Newton’s grip on his knees slackened, and he unspooled a little and blinked up at him. He coughed. “You going to loom there and stare like a spectre?” Newton said hoarsely. He gave a thin grin. “Are you a ghost of my own poor past decisions? You may have to be more specific from which epoch you come; any decision I made all through medical school could have summoned you.”

Hermann shook his head, unable to summon more than vague annoyance at the babble when Newton looked this wretched. His skin was pallid and sweaty, hair pressed to his forehead, shadows scooped under his eyes. “Newton,” Hermann said and then stopped. He stood there on the threshold.

Newton’s mouth made a thin and unfamiliar line, a strange compressed shape. He stopped his babble, at least. Hesitantly he uncurled a little further, sitting up. “Hermann …” Newton said slowly. He ran a hand back through his hair, rumpling it, and blinked owlish and unsure. “If I asked you to join me, would you say yes?”

Hermann squared his shoulders, an old familiar motion, and sniffed. “I would not say anything,” he said.

The question hung in the air, and his answer, far enough from a clearly spoken one that Hermann could avoid feeling trapped. He knew what was wanted, and knew what he wanted, right now, tired and aching after a day’s bloody work. He stepped in and closed the door carefully.

Newton stared up at him all the while, and shuffled to the side to make room. He left Hermann the bulk of the bed and the side close to the wall, so he wouldn’t fall, and Newton didn’t say anything or manhandle him when Hermann took what must have felt a long and awkward time to lie down beside him, as he settled his cane down and then leveraged himself down slow and careful by degrees. 

Newton hovered his hands over him but did not touch, until Hermann stretched out by his side, and breathed out then in, and held out his arm in as close as he could come to invitation, his lips pressed together tight and thin. This, too, he could compartmentalise. It did not need to mean anything, it did not mean anything save that they were tired and had worked hard and long.

Newton pushed into his embrace desperately, curling his face into Hermann’s neck, pressing their chests together. He kept his hips canted careful away, and Hermann made a low grumble in the back of his throat, and said, grudging, annoyed, “I will tell you if it hurts.”

Newton hummed low in his throat. “Sure,” he said, sceptical, and he hovered a hand over Hermann’s hip. “Will you tell me if this helps?” He laid his hand on Hermann’s hip, gentle and light, just a warm presence there over the ache.

The heat did help, a little. Hermann cleared his throat, and did not tell him one way or another.

Newton’s hand really was quite warm, to be felt through his shirt. “You are the very strangest spectre,” Newton said, and curled comfortably into him.

If Newton did not at once fall into dreamless and easy slumber like Hermann perhaps hoped, nor did he toss and scream in nightmare, which was something. He curled into him, and Hermann stared out above his head, trying not to think, but of course the harder he tried not to think the more his brain insisted on it. He must think of everything, everything, calculate what had gone wrong in his initial estimate, how fast that thing must have been able to travel, what a danger was posed to coastal cities if the next kept to Newt’s predictions and had more capacities still …

Their thoughts ran in the same direction, unwelcomely. “I am thinking of calling him Leatherback,” Newton said into his chin. Hermann clenched his teeth. As if apologetically Newton moved back a little, which could not have been comfortable, with half of him hanging off the bed. “Perhaps a little presumptuous when I barely saw him. I missed most of it. I wish I had been there.” And he shuddered, once, convulsively, and gripped tight around Hermann.

“You do not,” Hermann stated into his hair. He was fairly sure of it, but saying it still made him feel better. Newton did not sound as though he had missed out on a treat; he sounded the truth, as though he had missed out on a terror.

“I would have seen it, I might have got samples, had you not been swanning around and made it necessary to go below,” Newton retorted. “As though there was the least bit of anything your mind could do in that fight!”

Perfectly true and far more wholly unwelcome, the pain stinging back along his veins. Hermann stiffened, and Newton’s mouth dropped open a moment, and he pressed back in: his hand shifted hesitantly, looping perhaps unintentionally around Hermann’s waist, his head tucked into the space of Hermann’s neck.

Newton said, muffled and low, “It is only that I wish I could – I wish I could bottle you up and keep you safe down here, to—Not to study, or perhaps a little, but only to keep you safe, Hermann. Hermann,” and he stopped talking and made a low unhappy noise deep in his throat.

Hermann ran his fingers once through Newton’s tangled hair, to smooth it down. It seemed wiser not to say anything to that. He was not at all sure how to untangle his own reaction to Newton’s words, which on the face of them ought to have been a little horrifying.

By degrees Newton’s breathing slowed down, steadied out: a marvel upon the terrors of today, that he could be anything like steady. 

There should not have been room for them both on his bed, but they fitted together. They fitted together easily: it seemed Newt’s softness rested easily against his own sharp angles. Resting together like this, even though so close, they did not cut each other, nor wound. 

Another thing to stack back in a shelf and avoid thinking about. Some time in the years after the war, if he had any years after the war, he could take these memories down, and sort through them, all his fears and all his hopes; after the war, if they could secure an _after_.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Some sexual content in this one.)

There was precious little time for sleep.

The kaiju tore their way through the population, the Fleet closed up around the holes, and funding ran lower and lower. Rich Europeans who had channelled money into Fleet defences to protect their trade interests saw repayment mostly only in human life, and instead advocated for the world’s whole population to move inland, or merely those who could afford it. The Fleet kept fighting, with no ships to replace those that fell, no guns to replace those that broke – all was scarce save for casualties.

In amongst it all Stacker Pentecost made admiral. Mako Mori made captain. Yamarashi made landfall at Manila, and ravaged half the island before Fleet ships and the inland turrets at last took it down. Newton had to do without his loblolly boy, who never came back from his shore leave.

Hermann managed a rough estimate of the point of entry, then a different estimate, another, another, changing with each new attack. He mapped them out in a line that Mako shook her head at silently. So he remade his calculations yet again, then redid them, ignoring Newton’s jibes. He taught the midshipmen algebra with chalkboards and nowhere near enough patience, and they were so young, they were so terribly young.

“Oh, I have a present for you,” Newton said one day, and Hermann looked up at him.

It had been entirely without asking, Hermann moving his workspace into Newton’s surgery. One day he had simply settled in at the desk in one corner with his starchart pinned above, stacking his maps tidily next to him. This way they went through less candles. It was the economical solution.

Newton dived his hands energetically into his travel bag, which to Hermann’s knowledge had last been used to transport a piece of Yamarashi’s lung. “Ah. There is no need,” Hermann said. “No need at all.” Newton did not seem to be listening, so Hermann gave up on subtlety. “Please burn it.”

Newton laughed as though Hermann was joking, and fetched out triumphantly at last whatever his knickknack was, a bloodstained thing.

“Really, please burn it,” Hermann said, but he put his stick of chalk down, and pushed back in his chair to better look.

Newton wiped it ineffectually with his sleeve, and presented his prize to Hermann: a globe, about the size of a grapefruit and cast in bronze, set in a wooden stand. Hermann held out his hands, mutely, and Newton settled the globe carefully into his keeping. Hermann traced over the shapes of the continents. Newton’s theories seemed less far-fetched when he looked at their world like this, imagining it as just one of many planets in space, circling the sun, sailing through space as the _Jaeger_ presently sailed down past the Cape. “There is quite a bloodstain over the Americas,” Hermann said, the first thing he could find to say.

“Fitting enough,” Newton replied with a snort. 

Hermann ran his sleeve over it but felt inclined to linger his touch on the copper. He set the globe carefully on his desk. He had seen such things only at a distance and at auctions, could not even quite afford the printed world map he had last been longingly looking at, settling on the many separate charts that were a navigator’s more standard fare.

And now this: all the world envisaged at once, and cast proud in metal, as though to say _here it is and so it shall remain_ , though the coasts were already out of date.

Hermann said weakly, “Such projections are hardly accurate.” He cleared his throat, on steadier ground now. “The Mercator projection—”

Newton waved his arm energetically, sleeve flopping somewhat. “It’s not meant to be accurate, Hermann!” he said with some passion. “It’s so you can hold the world in the palm of your hand!” He leaned forward over Hermann’s shoulder, the thoughtless sharing of each other’s space that had become more natural these days. They had not yet spoken of the nightmares. 

So when Newton said, “I want to give you the world,” only softly, he said it all but in Hermann’s ear, and Hermann could feel his breath.

Hermann stared at the globe. He could feel the rigidity in his shoulders; damn his too-heightened awareness of touch and his own space, his own body, the lines he drew around himself and kept within. 

Newton pulled back alarmingly fast and walked to the other side of the room. Hermann turned to watch as Newton washed his hands, waved one hand with water droplets still flicking from it and announced, “It seemed only fitting, as you seek to put a girdle about the Earth.”

The phrase caught at Hermann’s memory, so it was safe to assume it came from Newton’s usual resource when he sought to annoy him. “Stop that,” Hermann said. He felt pulled, weighted towards the globe. He had a very unprofessional urge to leave aside his other work and sketch out this delightful little map, though the problem of how to represent a spherical truth in a mere two dimensions was one that had been vexing cartographers since Ptolemy. 

He turned his back on the gift to give Newton a considering look. Newton ducked his head and wiped water over the back of his neck as well, as though this was not merely his surgery but his own personal bathing-room; ridiculous nuisance of a man. “Your favoured of his plays is _The Tempest_ , I recall you mentioning,” Hermann said. It had hardly surprised him, much as his own avowed love for Shakespeare’s histories evoked from Newton an eye-roll and a ‘naturally’. “Which would you be, do you think, Puck or Ariel?” He could not quite recall which of those fey spirits had first said Newton’s line. 

His own attempt at moving the conversation somewhere more familiar made him uncomfortable, when he thought on it for a moment. He did not like to think of Newton as either creature, the cheerful but mischievous servant or the unwilling slave. 

Newton’s objections were quite other in nature. “Why can’t you cast me as a human?” he said sourly.

“I …” Hermann said and trailed off, a little stunned at himself. “You are quite correct, Newton. My apologies.” He frowned.

“I do love that lopsided frog look on you,” Newton said, and clapped him on the shoulder. Thoughtless, casual, no closer than he needed to be: Hermann leaned into the touch in relief. “I’m not offended, Hermann. I can’t say I ever quite think of myself as human, when it comes to it – what is a human, how to define us? Wildly contradictory creatures, that is about all I can come up with, though I’ll mostly leave it to philosophers. In any deeper sense I could not say what makes a man, though I daresay I could list the bones of the body until I was red in the face!”

Hermann could not help but smile at him, and was grateful, too, when Newton did not comment on his smile – quite as much a lopsided look, Hermann knew. “Last time you grew bored by the kneecap,” Hermann said. “Though you had consumed quite a lot of rum, if I recall.”

Newton brightened. “Do you think—”

“Pray do not.”

Newton grinned at him, and Hermann turned back to his desk, feeling a little more content. Surely now he could focus once more on his equations, and come up with an answer that could satisfy.

But he could not keep his thoughts on his work. His eyes were caught by the bright copper gleam of the globe.

It was a fanciful thing and he well knew that, a mere representation. More than one attempt at circumnavigation had been vastly unprepared, fooled partly by globes like this one into thinking the task more achievable: with continents pressed so small, distances could seem like the work of a week’s sailing when they would take months. And yet. His imagination sparked at it, his tired mind stirring. What was it Puck said? _I will put a girdle about the Earth in thirty minutes._

A girdle, a loop around the Earth, not like the neat bisecting loop he dreamed of but still a ring, it was a ring.

Hermann stood up so his chair scraped, and Newton made a small noise of surprise, dropping something. Hermann did not care. “Newton, I have it,” he said urgently. He turned, waving the globe very gently. “I have it.”

Newton picked up his cloth from the floor and draped it over the table. “I should hope so; it is a gift,” he said, clearly not comprehending.

“Listen to me, for once, dear nuisance,” Hermann said, and spun the globe, exultant. It was easy to imagine the tiny ridges of mountains. “When I plotted out the emergence points on my charts I could find no sensible pattern, we have found so far no pattern, save that they are mostly in the Pacific. I could predict emergences, but due only to probability, not the pattern – but Newton, Newton. Look at it! It is a ring; all of these occur near exactly within this ring, and so do volcanoes, look, the volcanoes of Japan and Chile and the tip of the Americas.” He traced the line, careful, slow. “Kaiju emergences … If I am right, and certainly if you can help me to prove it with your work, then they have all come from some common place after all – a common depth, at least – trenches, Newton, trenches and fissures, deep valleys in the seabed.”

Hermann grinned across at Newton, waiting for the returning grin, for Newton’s eyes to light up like a phosphor match and meet him word for word, race ahead of him and talk of trenches and perhaps of deep sea evolution. Newton just stared at him, a slight frown tugging down his brow. Hermann shook his head impatiently, and put the globe carefully down on his desk, like the treasure it was. He really should get around to thanking him. 

“Newton,” Hermann said, slower, but he could not help his smile. “This can help with preparations, and even better, it can help with understanding. The kaiju could be – geothermal, they could be tectonic, we may be able to understand them!”

Newton’s eyes were quite blank behind his glasses. Hermann never had the best ability at reading expressions, which was one reason why Newton’s company could almost be called soothing, with how loudly he showed each and every emotion he felt as he was feeling it. It was unusual for Newt to be this hard to read. 

His eyes slid over Hermann’s shoulder, settling on the globe, and then he scowled. He ran a hand through his hair, in need of a trim, and shook his head. “I wanted you to see the world as it was,” Newton said, and settled his gaze on him again, hooked with scorn. “But all you see is a mirror of your own ideas. Typical.” 

Hermann stepped back, staggered by his scathing tone, his pallid complexion. “Newton? Hardly …”

“Seeing patterns where there are none, grabbing on any proof that could support your theories,” Newton said, and shook his head. “You’re the only thing worse than a geocentric, Hermann: an egocentric.”

Real hurt robbed Hermann of his breath. He breathed in, steadying himself, drawing familiar anger comfortably around him like an old jacket. “Strong words from a man who needs to be coddled to sleep through the night,” Hermann snapped.

He knew at once he had gone too far.

Newton took a step back from him, back and away, though this was Newton’s workshop.

Hermann followed after him and staggered with the motion of the ship. His cane was still leaned up against his desk. He barely thought of it, preoccupied by Newton’s waxy, pallid look, face flushing now with anger. “Forgive me,” he stammered. “I should not have—”

Newton grabbed his coat from the hook and shook his head, pulling it on quick, decisively. “Enjoy telling the captain your theories, Hermann,” Newton said, spitting out the word theories like it was poison. He pushed his arms angrily through the sleeves, getting tangled for his troubles. Sorting himself out he snarled, “That lung may not have been as well preserved initially as I would’ve done it, but no creature with tissues like that could originate anywhere near the depths you’re suggesting. You natter away with your cartographical nonsense, and I will show the captain where to hit.”

And he stormed out.

Hermann stared after him, swaying with the motion of the ship. As well as hurt he was baffled: he had not done anything to merit this level of venom, at least not recently. They had not even been fighting.

After a few moments his body caught up to his thoughts, and he grabbed his cane and hastened after him.

Newton was already well down the corridor, and it stung. In the normal way of their arguments Newton deliberately lagged a little in case Hermann wanted to rush after him for the last word, so Newton could have the pleasure of shouting at him some more. This was more bitter than any of their recent fights, and Hermann’s heart beat a frantic rhythm against his chest.

He caught up with him at last, but Newton showed no signs of slowing, and that stung worse. “Newton,” Hermann gasped out.

Newton slowed just a little, at least, and that was a good sign. Newton’s glare, though, was pure poison. “Hermann,” he grated out.

“Newton,” Hermann said and found he did not know how to make amends. Not when Newton was looking quite this much like a venomous snake, in any case. Usually Newton was the one who smoothed things back over if their tempers rose too high. “Newton, pray drink some coffee and calm yourself,” and it came out scolding and quarrelsome because of course it did, because he could never be as free and easy as he would like to be.

Newton shook his head briskly and kept walking. “If I must share my work space with you,” he shot back over his shoulder, “at least do not plague my free hours as well.” 

Hermann stopped short appalled.

He cleared his throat and Newton was gone. Well out of range, if Hermann had been the type to do anything as undignified as continue to chase after him. 

It was clear that inviting himself into Newton’s surgery could not have been more unwelcome; he had no idea how on Earth to extract himself from the situation, now, or where else would even do, when his work was proved once more quite vitally important. He believed it was vitally important. It _was_.

Hermann gripped his cane and stood grimly breathing until he could nearly convince himself he was angry and not concerned, and went to talk to Captain Mori. Then he charted their course back to the Philippines. There was important work to be done there by the supposed trench.

It was good; progress, at last, in the face of the seemingly endless onslaught that could not be conquered and only be endured. Progress to a conquering of their own.

That night Hermann lay awake and tried not to think what nightmares must be shaking Newton’s slumber. They were undoubtedly worse than usual from his cries, ragged little whimpers Hermann could just make out through the wall, the repeated _no, no_ , fading into a mumble. 

Hermann lay awake, digging his thumbs into his aching thigh. His eyes itched. It took everything he had not to go to him.

 

*

 

Mako knocked politely on the door of their working space before she entered, and Hermann did his best to sit up straighter, though his back cricked in protest.

Resources were stretched thin, and despite the new tension between them Hermann had no choice but to hunker into his space in Newton’s surgery. He marked his corner with a rope along the floor, and grimly ignored any of the insults Newton threw at him until Newton took to throwing actual bits of viscera or seashell, and then Hermann started shouting back in earnest.

At least it passed the time.

Just as often the air between them was strained and silent, and perhaps fortunately now was such a day, no unprofessional bickering for the captain to see. Mako nodded to them both. The deep blue of her coat always made her seem so sombre. “Doctors,” she said. “I’d like to confer with you.”

Hermann stood up and threw off a salute. He tried to ignore how Newton scoffed at him. 

“Of course, captain,” he said. “Anything you need.”

“Mostly with you, Dr Gottlieb,” Mako said seriously, and Hermann was not able to ignore how that made Newton stare down at the floor. She shook her head. “We cannot continue on to the Marianas as planned. Your data predicts the next kaiju will emerge near Australia, yes?”

Hermann nodded.

“Shao’s merchant fleet cannot get there in time,” Mako said, and Hermann closed his eyes. 

“I am sure we can continue on to the trench at some other time,” he said, though it grated over his throat. He opened his eyes to see Newton jeering at him, and fixed his eyes determinedly on Mako. “Perhaps there will be useful data from this attack, as well.” If they survived it.

A slight smile graced Mako’s face. “I did not mean to make you worry,” she said. “Captain Hansen of the _Striker_ is stationed at the port, and will intercept its predicted course. I am only bringing us nearby in case.” 

In case the _Striker_ failed, to join the harrowing fight or pick up survivors. There were so seldom survivors.

Hermann nodded. “Of course; do you need me to chart the course?” Barely a formality. Mako was more hands-on in navigation than some captains.

She gave a small wave to the room. “Please, continue your work,” she said. Hermann suppressed a wince.

“Let me have samples,” Newton said loud and high, after Mako had already turned to leave.

She turned back to him and lifted her eyebrows minutely.

“There will be samples, fresh ones,” Newton said. “If you can get word to the ship to preserve them or at least a piece. Captain, I would learn so much if I had immediate access to a kaiju carcass.”

“We would need to sail fast, to be sure of reaching there in time,” Mako said slowly.

“Let me cut into them fresh,” Newton said, feverish. “Please.”

Hermann cleared his throat, shifting his cane in his hands, and Mako looked at him. “It would be good to gather at least some useful information out of this,” he said. Newton gave him a poisonous glance, and Hermann kept his eyes on Mako. After a moment Mako nodded thoughtfully. 

“Prepare yourselves, then, doctors,” she said, and walked out with her head held high, eyes burning as they always did. Hermann feared sometimes for all the people around him who burned so brightly with purpose. He feared what would be left when the burning was done.

The second she was gone Newton hissed, “I do not need your help!”

“Clearly you do,” Hermann returned. He felt heavier now it was just the two of them, grimly aware of how fraught things had become since Newton flung vicious insult in the face of his new discoveries.

“I can do without your pity,” Newton said. He strode closer to him and crossed his arms, glaring. They had not ever come to the point of physical blows, but at times it felt they may. “You despise my work as you despise me, you may as well speak it plainly.”

Hermann lowered himself in the chair, to get a little further away from him, and ease his hip. “I would not say that,” he said. He considered. “Certainly both disgust me at times. Both are tremendously irritating—”

“Better irritating than boring,” Newton said. He strode by him and patted his shoulder as he passed, and Hermann twitched away from it. Newton’s smile was all teeth. “Don’t worry about your research being delayed. Your theory was no good anyway.”

Hermann shook his head, turning back to his table.

He did not argue, because he did not want to admit that Newton might be right. Their initial course had been for the deepest known trench in the seas, but half of that was guesswork and old seaman’s talk. There was no guarantee any one fissure in the skin of the Earth in particular had any significance to the kaiju threat.

He would see what information might be gathered from the next kaiju’s point of emergence, if he could extrapolate it. Guesswork, all of it guesswork. 

Newton and he both glanced up at the same moment, as the ship changed course. The slight shift was hard to describe but unmissable after a long time at sea. 

“Now for a long and dull wait,” Newton muttered. His glance weighed on Hermann as if to make quite sure Hermann knew what the ‘dull’ referred to.

“Perhaps for you,” Hermann said. He pulled out the chart for the coastal areas of Australia, pleased that his organisational system meant it came easily to hand. “I find my work perfectly engaging.”

“Insufferable …” Newton started at a mutter and escalated in volume till he nearly shouted the words as he strode about, pulling jars out aimlessly and slotting them back in. “Irritating, wretched, horrifically dull, minute little mote of an intelligence! One-track, unskilled, tragically single-minded—”

“I can think of one area at least where I far excel you,” Hermann said, “the ability to keep silent.”

Newton barked out a laugh, and it was almost worse that it sounded sincere. Hermann grew tired of being the object of his mirth, sometimes. “You are nowhere near as good at that as you think you are.”

“And yet,” Hermann said.

Newton shook his head, quick, irritated, and continued pacing and ranting. His mutters dropped to a less than audible level at least, thankfully, but his tread quickened, all but tearing about the enclosed space.

On his fifth circuit Hermann primly extended his cane.

Newton tripped and went clattering, landing on his knees with hands splayed out in front of him. He pushed himself up, blinking and shaking his head, to stare at Hermann. “That was spiteful, stupid and unnecessary,” he gasped. Hermann waited. “Much like yourself.” There it was. 

“I didn’t bruise anything but your pride, did I?” Hermann said, idly, as though the answer was of no concern to him. Mako would not be pleased if he injured his co-worker. 

Newton stood up, brushing down his knees and shirt. “I’m a model of health,” he said, as though he’d slept more than five hours of the past twenty-five. “Nearly up to your level.”

And that was not quite the type of thing Newton would mock, even these days. “Me,” Hermann said, and then could not find it in himself to continue, to enumerate all the reasons that was laughable. The space was cramped with two of them here, frantically and hectically small, and his cane could not be overlooked, nothing about him could be overlooked.

Newton tilted his head and counted off on his fingers. “You have few preventable health issues, aside from your insomnia—” 

“Insomnia!” Hermann scoffed. “The only trouble I have with sleeping is you.”

“Hardly,” Newton said with a superior air. “When I moved in they all told horror stories of berthing next to you, that you can be heard grinding your teeth clear through the wall.”

Hermann started to grit his teeth, but caught himself and stopped. “And what would you prescribe, Dr Geiszler?” he said with icy politeness.

Newton cast his eyes heavenward. “Are you really asking for my input on better things to do with your mouth—” he started, and then stopped, clamping his mouth shut. His face flushed red beneath the freckles sunlight gave him.

Newton often said unfortunate things, but normally he would move right past them, not stumble like this. Hermann was unsure how to respond. His body knew how to respond, mortifyingly, a heat rising in his stomach at even the implication.

Newton stared, unmissably, at his mouth. Hermann caught the direction of his gaze before Newton gave a quick jerk of his shoulders and stared at the ground instead.

Hermann touched a finger to his lips, feeling bold, feeling strange. The ship pitched beneath them, and he kept his footing. He cleared his throat. 

“Let us say that I am,” he said, voice thin and strained.

Because he missed him, damn it, he missed Newton’s closeness at night. More and more often lately, he wondered things he should not wonder. He wanted things he should not want.

And Newton was the one who had said it and then turned scarlet, the one who always seemed to be moving into his space or offering a hand on his elbow or standing over him so his breath was warm on Hermann’s neck, or at least who used to; Newton the one looking up, now, his eyebrows rising and his face red and his lips slightly parted. So why not? It would be bitter, not sweet, but it would be something.

Hermann jerked his chin up in an old familiar tic and met Newton’s gaze challengingly. 

“Well,” Newton said slowly and ran his tongue over his upper lip quick and nervous. “I would suggest …” He fiddled with the strap of his suspenders, and then shrugged, and he crossed the two steps between them and kissed Hermann on the mouth.

His lips were chapped and the kiss, too, was quick and nervous. Hermann opened his mouth into the kiss and catalogued the sensations in the back of his mind, nearly giddy with it: he tasted of salt with just a hint of ammonia, and when Hermann opened his eyes Newton’s face was screwed up with concentration, kissing Hermann like this was the most vital incision of a surgery, something that required utmost focus.

It was only a moment and then Newton pulled back, squinting one eye open to give him a guarded look. Hermann adjusted his glasses where Newton had knocked them awry. Newton opened his mouth and Hermann grabbed him by the back of the head, clenched his hand in his hair and tugged him forward, colliding their mouths together. With the motion of the ship it was rougher than intended, his teeth clacking into Newton’s lip, but Newton made an urgent little noise into his mouth and put his hands on him at last, finally, finally, one tight on his shoulder and the other steadying at his hip, and kissed him. He was so warm. 

Hermann sucked lightly on his bottom lip in apology for his roughness, and Newton made a little mewling sound and broke off to kiss the corner of his mouth, then up, kissing the line between his brows, then back to his mouth, kissing him soft and slow but pressing forward, his fingers digging into Hermann’s shoulder. 

He pulled back gasping, face flushed, and Hermann was content with the unwelcome distance if it meant he got to see Newton looking like _that_ and know he’d been the one to cause it. Hermann was hardly a man considered to turn heads, but Newton look dazed and delighted, eyelids heavy, lip swollen, all from kissing him.

It had not been enough to drive his senses from him. “Not in here, for God’s sake,” Newton gasped, and Hermann shivered all up his spine.

“No,” he agreed. He stroked his fingers through Newton’s hair, and Newton closed his eyes and leaned back into the petting. “That is, if you want …” He wasn’t bold enough to ask it outright, or else he was bold enough to know the answer already, from how urgently Newton had gripped him. They had been a long time at sea. “One of our rooms?”

Newton nodded and then nodded again, stepping back. Reluctantly Hermann let his hand drop. 

“I’ll go first. Come to mine,” Newton said and then hurtled out the door like a cannonball. 

Hermann counted out thirty seconds to let Newton get ahead of him, and as a chance for his own thundering pulse to calm down a little. He gulped in a breath then drew in a steadier one, and gripped his cane carefully. He put his charts away, in the proper places but not tidily, and then he hastened out the door after him.

Striding through the hall he struggled to strategize, his heart beating quick for many reasons, his thoughts both too slow and far too fast. All he could think of was the coarse feeling of Newton’s hair under his hand, Newton’s breath against his lips, wondering how far that flush went down below the collar of his shirt. Hermann took out his handkerchief and wiped it across his brow. 

Perhaps it was for the best to be carried away by physicality. That way he could try to keep out any of the more ridiculous thoughts, of kissing Newton slower and soft, or lying next to him in the morning. He must not get carried away or go unguarded, as though he was enough of a fool to think this meant they were even still friends again. 

By the time he reached Newton’s door he was resolved, and it had been long enough since Newton’s touch that he’d lost some of his drunk feeling and grown frightened. For this to be a joke would be so easy and so devastating. Easier still to merely be turned down, as men were entitled to change their minds, and he was not sure he could handle that either. 

Hermann jerked his chin up and knocked.

The door nearly flew open and Newton stood wild-eyed in shirtsleeves and bare feet, and he seized Hermann by the coat and hauled him in.

Hermann allowed this, mostly keeping his balance, but pulling away long enough to close the door behind him. Newton nodded at that, and pulled back a little, running his hands through his hair and making it stand up wild from his head. Hermann breathed out carefully and tried not to feel foolish as he stooped to take his shoes off, leave his jacket folded on the desk. Newton took his cane and leaned it near the bed, conveniently and thoughtfully close. Hermann did not want to think about him being tender, the quiet domesticity of this moment, and he bit his lip hard.

“I have been thinking,” Hermann said and turned and stopped for a moment, the sight of Newton sitting waiting on his bed even fully clothed making his heart jump to his throat. He coughed and tried again. “I have been thinking that perhaps we should not kiss so much. It would not do to confuse ourselves over the manner of—”

He stuttered off as Newton nodded and stood, and tangled hands in his shirt and tugged urgently. “Yes, certainly,” he said impatiently, “only shut up and let’s take our clothes off,” and he leaned back on the bed, pulling Hermann down after him, only gently, not enough to risk any harm. Hermann could not find it in himself to care at that moment, and followed with a will, chasing Newton’s mouth despite his promises and kissing it, then remembering, and kissing down his throat.

Newton made a desperate little whine at that, and arched encouragingly into his touch. His hands were all over Hermann, touching, then pulling, until he had his shirt off and over his head. Hermann paused then, blinking, and took his glasses and folded them carefully on the desk, trying not to worry whether Newton would think him fussy for doing so.

Newton took off his own glasses and all but threw them across the room, and then was touching Hermann again, hands quick and clever over Hermann’s skin, exploring the entirety of him with his sure and stubby fingers. Hermann closed his eyes and tried to keep himself steady through how desperately he wanted this, and barely even thought of how strange it was. He was thin, bony—It was not as though Newton did not like bony things. Hermann laughed out loud at the thought. Newton’s clever fingers slowed.

“Dear?” he said, and Hermann flinched. “Hermann,” Newton said instead. “Your leg?”

That did ache, of course it ached. Pain throbbed down through his hip and down to his toes, tingling warningly at his spine, but the ghost of Newton’s hands were hot on his skin and Hermann had scarcely bothered to notice. Certainly he would notice in time, though. “On the side?” he said, uncertain, not entirely expecting Newton to be considerate. Newton nodded and slid a hand along his side, the other on his shoulder, supporting him as Hermann shifted carefully. There was space on the bed for the two of them if they lay very close together. It was one solution.

The sudden thought of Newton atop him was dizzying, but too much to think about right now. Hermann shifted again, stretching out his leg testingly, and nodded. Newton grinned, threading his hands through Hermann’s hair, content to go back to his explorations.

_Stop_ or _More_ and Hermann wasn’t sure which one he wanted, or what he was meant to want. He went with what he did know, which was that Newton should certainly not be in a shirt right now. He pulled it off, eventually, Newton barely helping, but paused before he could toss it aside and hung it in front of Newton irritably. “Have you laundered this once in your life,” Hermann said, giving it a shake.

Newton blinked at him. It was flattering how incapable he seemed of coherent speech, or even his usual incoherent speech. “Erm,” he said. 

Hermann shook the shirt again, in his face. Newton focused in on the stain and grinned. “Oh! That’s not the usual kaiju blood, it seems to be lymph, both chemical and organic! Nothing can shift it,” he said, excitedly, and somehow right then the urge to kiss him was nearly impossible to fight. Hermann gave in and kissed the crook of his shoulder where the tail of a sea serpent curled, and ran his hands along his warm stomach. Newton shifted away from the contact huffing out a breath; ticklish or just shy? Just to test the theory Hermann shifted his weight to kiss Newton’s stomach, and Newton drew in a sharp breath, and muttered, “Christ.”

“You do not believe in any such deity,” Hermann said, quite smugly, and drew Newton’s mouth up to kiss him hungrily. No kissing outside of the bed, that would do fine as a rule. Right now it was just them, just bodies and closeness. Newton tilted his forehead against Hermann’s and tugged lightly at his belt, and Hermann nodded, reaching for Newton’s.

“I certainly believe in your capabilities,” Newton said as he disrobed him. He trailed a hand down Hermann’s hip lightly, rested it musing behind his knee. “I believe in inarguable truths lying beneath the world we know if only we dig deep enough …” He trailed off with a hiss as Hermann pulled his pants down and traced a hand carefully down over his hip, his thigh, where fins tangled with faded green seaweed. He felt oddly tentative now, nerves rising up that had been submerged when he was just drunk on skin to skin.

Skin to skin. He kissed Newton, pulled back, kissed him again slower. He kissed his eyelid and burrowed into the warmth of his neck and murmured, “Why do you taste so strongly of seawater, do you know?”

Newton shrugged, tracing fingers back up to his hip, tracing down. “You taste of – nothing much. Boredom, chalkdust. Just of mouth. Nothing special,” Newton said, and kissed him again, savagely, as if to consume him, and Hermann had to work not to grin.

He cleared his throat, the confidence helping at least a little. “How do you want to do this,” he said, and Newton smiled at him through lidded eyes.

“Together, any way so long as we are together,” he said, and then added, “But this, too, this,” and he rocked carefully into him. Hermann closed his eyes and hissed at the friction, their bodies moving together, and pushed against him as well. Newton gasped out ragged and slid his hand down, touching him, starting to stroke at him, and Hermann jerked at the touch, finally, and it did not matter so much right then if he did the right thing or the proper or important one, only that he must get his hands on him at once, so he did, tugged at him, and Newton’s breathing went faster, faster, the faster he went.

A joy it would be to observe him, but all he could manage right now was to arch into his grip, twist into his hands, his clever hands, and watch as Newton mewled and moaned under his grip, coming apart under Hermann’s hands. He at least tried to figure out what movements made him react best or _moan_ like that and adjusted his technique accordingly – empirical, replicable – Newton sucked at his ear and buried his moans into his neck and Hermann lost entirely any ability to think. All he could do was be there, there with him and nearly one with him, bodies warm against each other, pushing into his grip until it felt he was close to coming apart, or finally being put together.

“Nuisance—” he said and Newton pulled back from his neck to glare at him, lips red and soft.

“Stop calling me that.”

Hermann leaned in closer and kissed his neck. “Newton,” he said, soft, and Newton’s back went tense and he twisted into his grip and cried out like he was startled, and there was warmth on Hermann’s hand but all he could focus on was Newton’s face and the newly-made look of it, the vulnerability, how for a moment he was not a mystery but the only thing that made sense. Zenith, Hermann thought dazedly. The apex, the peak. 

Newton’s eyes drifted open and he smiled and leaned forward and kissed his way down Hermann’s neck, leisurely and slow. He touched him slow, reverent, and Hermann came apart in his grasp, in his arms at last, crying out soundless, low, and Newton held him through it, kissed at him all through it, and then they held each other quietly. Hermann felt warm, golden; the ship floating quietly, safe, the course known. 

After a while Hermann roused and wiped them down, but did not have energy to do anything more than pull the blanket over them. His hip gave a dull throb, and he grimaced, shifting around as best he could.

Newton settled a hand over it with his eyes barely open, rubbing at the sore muscle. Hermann opened his mouth to thank him, but already words felt once more sticky and uncomfortable. He closed his mouth again, and tilted his forehead just a little closer to Newton’s.

They fell asleep in each other’s arms that night, and other nights, in Newton’s bed or Hermann’s or quick and quiet in the lab, and they did not talk of it. 

Hermann worked at his equations and when that did not distract him from the fears and the doubts he did busywork with the logline and logbook and when that did not work he buried himself in Newton’s embrace, and that worked a while. 

Newton paced and readied his knives and his jars and kissed Hermann like a drowning man, when he didn’t throw insults at him like Hermann was the one holding him under, and they did not talk of it, not once, all that long tense voyage to Sidney. Hermann carried new aches around in his chest and slept better and still knew, as he had always known, that nothing was solved by having just a piece of the equation.


	5. Chapter 5

The crossing of the equator passed without any of the ceremony a sailing ship would normally grant it. Beasts had risen from the sea, after all. There was no time for superstition. The crew was fraught and tense, taking their daily grog with quiet ferocity like worshippers at a temple. Mako kept them all together with her sharp eyes, her kind words when they were needed, sharp words sometimes too. 

Even with everything, Hermann could not pass up the chance to glory in the stars of another hemisphere. Most nights found him up on the deck. If things were better he would have invited Newton up here with him, and pointed out the shapes of the stars. He wanted badly to show him the Southern Cross, the fulcrum underpinning the sky. 

He blinked watering eyes in the brisk night air, and coughed into his handkerchief. Tendo leaned over far enough from the wheel to thump companionably at his shoulder, then moved back to his post. “Don’t know how I’ll ever keep all these stars straight,” Tendo joked, and Hermann smiled a little. They both knew Tendo was an excellent navigator, one of the reasons why any captain ever consented to wasting their bosun on a night watch.

Hermann leaned over to elbow lightly at his stomach, then shifted back, quite content with that level of physical contact for the day. “Perhaps the same way you keep the names straight of all the women and men you send those loving letters to,” he joked.

Tendo sniffed. “They all know,” he said, affronted. “They all know, and Allison knows. What kind of man would I be otherwise?”

“Hardly the first man to do so, at sea,” Hermann said wryly. He cast his eyes up, smiling at the constellations, both familiar and new.

“But I do it like a gentleman,” Tendo said, and Hermann laughed a little at that. It felt good to laugh, something tense in his chest unwinding just a little.

His pocketwatch was winding down, lately, losing minutes. The thing was no use if it was not immaculately precise. Next time they were in port he must reset it.

“What about that man you were writing to?” Tendo said, and Hermann cleared his throat quickly, and squinted up at the sky.

“A colleague,” he said, and then said, “How peculiar it is, to see Orion turned upside down,” and he did not dare to look him in the face.

Tendo, a kindlier man than Hermann gave him credit for, let him get away with it. “The hunter,” he said and lifted an imaginary glass towards the sky in toast. “Let’s hope that’s a portent.”

“Let’s hope it’s a portent for us, in particular,” Hermann said, and made his way downstairs. Newton was in bed already for once, leaving space in the surgery, and Hermann laid out his star charts and lost himself in pleasant contemplation.

That was his work and passion, navigating the heavens and the seas. Not making a thorough study of each of Newton Geiszler’s tattoos and every inch of his skin, even if that was foremost in his mind at times. 

Even with the rushing, the ship straining before the wind and fair sprinting over the waves, by the time they arrived the battle was done. The beast was felled, and enormous. Looking at it threw Hermann off, and even as midshipman Namani called down the signals from the ships that could not yet be seen by the naked eye he was fumbling out his telescope and charts, his mind catching, because it looked like a landmass. With that pillar of seabirds rising up, the low dim line disrupting the line of the sea, it looked like an island. 

The seabirds were foolish, no creature had yet been observed feeding from the corpse of a sea serpent without at least sickening and normally following it into death. Still, birds were birds and ate all the same. No doubt Newton would have a great deal to say about that.

Closer, the gulls were interminably loud and the sea was frothed an unhealthy blue, the wrong shade of blue, the colour of lightning in a sickly storm, and Hermann moved his eyes away from it uncomfortably. Captain Hansen’s _Striker_ was battered, but by her lines had not taken on water, and the damage to her mast was fixable.

Mako stood, waiting, hands behind her back and shoulders a straight line in her coat. Tendo at the helm steered them closer, careful and slow, until they were in hailing distance.

“Captain,” Mako called across to the other ship. It was twenty metres away, and from Hansen’s answering grin her voice carried. “Admiral Pentecost wished me to pass along his congratulations for your victory.”

Captain Hansen grinned, but the younger man beside him, fair-haired like he was, laughed. “Cocky bastard!” he called. It did not carry as well, but well enough.

Hansen cuffed his head urgently, and Hermann was frozen, quite frozen. That was no way to refer to an admiral, to her father, and Mako valued respect.

But she was smiling just a little, professional, missing not a step. “My scientific team wished to pass along their ardent wish for samples.”

“Soon!” Hansen called across. “We’re still butchering the damn thing.” The waters around their ship foamed especially blue, and behind them floated that corpse vast as a landmass, flesh pitted from cannon and the hungry beaks of gulls. “Once we’re done we’ll send you the choicest piece, Captain!”

Mako lifted her hand in a wave, and turned to Hermann. “You may communicate the good news to your colleague, Dr Gottlieb.”

He wanted to say, _Communicate it yourself_. But he valued Mako. “He would need be deaf not to have heard that,” Hermann said instead. 

He went down, anyway. It was strange for Newt not to have rushed on deck at once at the prospect of encountering, ha, so large a potential body of his work. Despite himself Hermann wanted to know. Amongst Hermann’s terminal qualities, curiosity was his most magnetic drive, the pole to which he would always point come what may.

Newton looked faintly ill, but with his eyes burning, feverish. From the jars scattered over the room it was evident he had been in a fury of activity even moments ago, but at present he sat leaned over the table with his chin propped on the wood, staring slightly hollowly.

He didn’t look up when Hermann entered, but pinched his nose hard and picked up his glasses from the table, settling them back on.

“We’ve come close to the horrid thing,” Hermann said. He spoke more frankly now about the horrendous nature of the creatures, now there seemed such small hope of ever truly being at accords with this man. Newton just blinked slowly, and some impulse prompted Hermann to add, “We missed fighting it, of course, it has already been killed.”

Newton sighed, at that, and pushed his chair back with a scrape.

Hermann smiled thinly. It was always a relief to have his worst suspicions confirmed. “Disappointed?”

“Yes, and for every reason, and you know full well,” Newton said. “You know full well.” All his energy truly had left him if he wasn’t even yelling, those familiar rants that varied in pitch but were constantly at the highest volume imaginable.

“Oh, I know,” Hermann said, and sat down opposite him, not to be companionable but to ease the pain. “Everyone onboard ship is bemoaning that we could not join the battle, I think even Mako is, but you? Sad to see it die.”

“It would’ve been fascinating to see it die,” Newton said, and looked at him truly tiredly. “Yes, lambaste me with your caustic tongue all you wish, I do not deny it: I feel awful any time one of them is killed, and I don’t know why.”

“Because you are very nearly a worshipper of these beasts,” Hermann snapped, and Newton rolled up his sleeves. Very slowly and deliberately, so the patterns of colour on his arms were damningly apparent.

“If I’m owning up to my flaws, so must you,” Newton said. “I declare you inarguably – mark me, I said inarguably – inarguably prone to rapid assumptions, and to judgments that confirm your unrealistically symmetrical view of the world, attempting to cram every piece of it into a pattern and slicing off what deviances will not fit. You do not call every doctor a worshipper of Death merely because they stand elbow to elbow with him every day.”

Tempting as it always was to give an instant retort and keep up a lively back-and-forth for a while, sometimes Hermann stopped to consider what Newton said, to keep Newton from throwing accusations at him later. “Death and life hand in hand are a doctor’s work,” Hermann said, and added because he could not resist, “I should not need to tell you that. But these kaiju, there is no corresponding good. No light to banish the darkness. They are all devouring without even the ability to be devoured; they add nothing and take much.”

“An entirely unprecedented horror. I know,” Newton said. He pushed his glasses up his nose and sighed again. At some point he had smudged ink on one of the lenses, and it gave him a scattered look. “Were you in the colonies, for Trespasser?”

Hermann shook his head. “Pentecost recruited me in England.”

Newton nodded. Strange, for him not to resort instantly to yelling, and in its own way quite lovely. “Then you wouldn’t know what it’s like,” he said. He pushed back from his chair, stood, and returned with a book. He flipped it open carefully.

Bound in leather and wrapped in brown paper, the book was crammed with observational drawings and densely-packed writing, much of it cryptic to Hermann’s first glance. Newton turned a page, showing a sketch that was not in Newton’s hand, a kaiju with a bladed head that jutted forward _like the prow of a ship_ , yes, Newt looked to have copied Becket’s sketch faithfully. Whatever else, Hermann could not scorn the skill of Newton’s hands. He could only scorn what work he turned those hands to.

“Kaiju are always terrible as they are beautiful,” Newton said, flicking through the pages. “But the impact they have on land … it is like watching someone hit with grapeshot at close range, Hermann.” He looked up at him bleakly. “They just go right through us. They cut cities all to pieces and carry right on through.”

Hermann nodded, silently. He rested his hand lightly on his thigh and pressed at the aching muscles there, but listened. Any occasion of Newton talking in a calm and reasoned manner deserved rewarding.

“It is not the kind of wound a doctor can heal,” Newton said quietly. “So I fight them. As best I can.” He tapped two fingers against the book, and flicked it shut, a solid tome of years of study, of theory and passion intersecting. “Hermann, this is how I fight.”

Hermann almost wanted to look closer at that book sometime, decipher the notes in there and those scattered over the rest of Newton’s surgery, and that realisation was horrifying in its own way. He must remember to be wise, guarded. “To know your enemy,” Hermann said. “I do understand.” It burned within him, too, the need to understand, to know, though yes, he wished to categorise, to make sense of, to either piece new information into the original understanding of the universe or else overthrow the universe with new information if it could not be made to fit. Newton never seemed to understand that, how much of mathematics and astronomy was a constant process of reinvention.

Perhaps he understood a little. Perhaps they did understand each other, after all this time.

Newton tapped his fingers on the cover of the book, more restless now. “Yet I do not think they are evil creatures,” he said, because damn him, damn him, they could never have anything that was just simple or just good, nothing uncomplicated or easy or true. “Evil is not a thing that exists in the natural world, I do not think we should bring our own human judgments into it. A tiger does not kill because it is evil, it kills because it is hungry or due to instinct, to fight or impress or survive. There must be a reason, and I’m going to be the one to find it. They are beautiful, fascinating, like nothing else on earth. Or in the water, of course.” His grin was quick and bright, too many teeth. “Amphibians, like me.”

“Newt,” Hermann said, realising, and he cursed. “Exactly how much of your identity have you constructed around kaiju?”

“Nearly all of it,” Newton replied frankly. He scratched at his arm, the bright skin there. 

Hermann took off his own glasses and polished them, for something to do, for an excuse not to look at his face. He cleared his throat, settling them back on. “Newton,” he said, fumbling. “You are – more than your work.” He faltered: this was not his field, not his expertise, uncomfortable footing. “You are a perfectly … well …”

Newton turned and picked up one of the glass specimen jars, put it down with a shake of his head, and picked up another. He placed it in front of Hermann. “Hermann, tell me what you think of this,” he said, hands clasped behind his back as though to keep from interfering.

Hermann frowned at the sample: a thick slice of kaiju skin he didn’t particularly remember Newt acquiring, nondescript dark blue still dotted with spots of bright bioluminescence. The more Hermann looked at them the more they seemed almost to form patterns.

He could feel Newton behind his back, hovering. “You will accuse me of being a sentimental stargazer,” Hermann said slowly, “but—”

Newton sat down opposite him heavily. “I would, except I see it too,” he said. He traced his finger along the grass. “They are constellations.”

Hermann traced them too, frowning intently. “Ursa Minor and Major, Orion. Pleasant to see him the right way up again. Scorpius.” The clusters formed by the light spots made no coherent star-chart, constellations all jumbled together as they would never be in the night sky, but constellations they undeniably were. He stopped with his finger over one bright star. “And even you know this one, Polaris.”

He looked to Newton for explanation, for some scientific reasoning behind this strange event. With dismay he saw that Newton looked lost, as unsure as he felt.

Hermann put the question to words, however reluctantly. “But how would a creature from the depths of the sea mirror so perfectly our very constellations?”

Newt looked at him, pale. “I dream of them,” he said in barely a whisper. “Perhaps they dream of me.”

Hermann’s hand dropped to the table with a thud, and this time the struggle for words was harder, the question far more perplexing.

At that moment someone banged loud on the door. “Doctor!”

“I’m _busy_ ,” Newton snapped out, when Hermann was about to say the same thing.

The voice – someone young, maybe Renata – shouted, “Captain wants to know how you want us to preserve this piece of brain?”

And Newton was up from his seat at once, foaming like the unstable seas, and there, there was that light in his eyes. It evoked the familiar mix of fondness and slight discomfort. 

Newton ran through the door without another word, leaving him there. Hermann grumbled under his breath, and gave himself a moment to sit, though soon he’d need to go and tidy his work. This space would be unusable for at least a few days, if Newton was preserving something large. 

He looked through the book just briefly, but he could make little sense of any of Newton’s notes. At least he understood the man himself more, now, at least. Though there were always further mysteries. His final words were disquieting, when combined with his frequent nightmares. But surely it was merely Newton being his usual dramatic self. 

He put it out of his mind. He tried to put it out of his mind.

 

*

 

Hermann was on-deck when the new crew from Sydney rowed in, and watched as they climbed nimbly up the ropes thrown over the sides. He was on-deck because he did not have anywhere better to be. The fumes in the surgery were overpowering.

Captain Mori strode among the new crewmembers, nodding at them instead of shaking their hand as Pentecost would have done, but greeting each by name and directing them to their new duties. She stopped in front of the last and paused, her mouth pulling down just a fraction. “Mr Becket,” she said after a moment.

He put his thumbs in his belt and nodded to her. “Captain,” he said. “Not what you were expecting?” he added with a touch of humour, and she quickly shook her head.

“I was given to believe you were greatly scarred,” she said, and then with a return to her more usual tact, “As are we all in this war. I look forward to hearing your strategies for the gun crews.”

Becket nodded, shifting into a more formal stance, shoulders squared. “Have you the shot to practice daily at your accuracy?” he said.

“We barely have the shot to practice yearly,” Mako said.

“Then we must take care not to miss,” Becket said after a pause, rock-solid now, not the shuddering man Hermann remembered from just after the destruction of the _Anchor_. It seemed time ashore had done him good. He gave her a nod and carried his scant belongings belowdeck.

Hermann made idly after him, thinking of coffee.

“Dr Gottlieb,” Mako called after him, and he bobbed his head quickly in acknowledgment and turned to her.

“What can I do for you, captain?”

“How does your colleague get on with his brain?” Mako said.

Hermann considered and then discarded the unwise witticism that first came to him. “He has not left his surgery for two days, and I have not entered it; have not dared,” he said. “The odour is … powerful.” That, and Newton did not want him there. It was hard to be somewhere he was not wanted, although by this point in his life, he should really have grown used to it.

Mako nodded toward the galley and said, “I imagine he needs to eat.”

Hermann bristled. “Yes, and I have my own work to attend to,” he said. “I am kept busy; I am not Newton’s keeper.”

“You are my navigator; I can chart the course,” Mako said, looking at him seriously. “We must all pull together against this threat, and do what we can. Would you want another of the crew to be exposed to the situation, one less used to Dr Geiszler’s eccentricities?”

Someone else, eventually, inevitably, would hear Newton’s outlandish theories and read in them treason. It was one of the things that kept Hermann awake at night. “No,” he said. “You’re quite right. Forgive me.”

“I rely on you two to keep each other alive,” she said. “There is much to be done.”

Hermann stood a little straighter, as best he could. “Of course, captain. I’ll do everything I can.”

She gave him a small smile, then strode past, back straight, hands clasped behind her.

Hermann had to stop and brace himself in front of the surgery, inhaling and exhaling. The fumes were not as bad as he remembered, but then, he was not inside yet.

He knocked first, just in case. There was no response.

When he tried the door it only shifted half an inch before grinding to a stop, something  
blocking it, which was more concerning. “Newton,” he called, higher-pitched than he’d meant. He cleared his throat and said more firmly, sternly, “Mako wishes me to make sure you’re still alive in there. I would hate to disappoint her.”

Silence for a heart-stopping few moments, then the sound of something shifting around. Newton flung open the door and grinned at him joyously, as though they were not presently in the midst of at least three arguments. “I am alive, I am wondrously alive!” he declared and took several energetic steps back, waving for Hermann to enter. “And I am not the only one!”

“Erm,” Hermann said, stepping in.

The ammonic scent had faded, but not the sharply chemical rotting-fish stench of large quantities of kaijuflesh, and not the horrifying feeling of first stepping into a room where it appeared half one wall was brain. The sample was perhaps two metres tall and two wide, a roughly-shaped rectangle of spongy matter carved out of the creature’s cranium. Hermann knew it was a piece of brain only because Newt had told him so excitedly and at great length. There was some hint of the ripples and folds he was vaguely aware formed a part of the cerebrum, but on a massive scale, and on occasion flickering with disconcerting blue light like the flames that appeared to flicker at the top of masts occasionally in strange weather. The cross-section showed a few thick fleshy tubes of unknown purpose, one of which, tapering out of the side of the thing, had been set up over a bucket into which it pulsed out an unenthusiastic sputter of blue liquid every few seconds.

Hermann saw with a pang of appreciation that his own workstation, in the corner, had been hastily covered with a tarp.

He looked from the horrific thing to Newt. Newt gestured at it and exclaimed, “Would you just look at her!”

Newt’s apron was splattered with blue, his eyes were ringed with tiredness, his face pale, and he was buoyantly, joyously happy.

“I have seen … it,” Hermann said, and sighed. He did not have the heart nor indeed the capacity to dampen Newton’s enthusiasm when he was rendered so effervescent by it. “Have you made any new discoveries then?”

“Endlessly, but infuriatingly incomplete,” Newton said and turned a fond gaze upon the brain section. He actually patted it, his hand at least gloved. “She’s incomplete, but so much better than nothing – I need to find, hm, a better system of monitoring this, but occasionally there are bursts of energy from within, not unlike the theories of electricity.” He gave Hermann an excited look, and waved a hand at Hermann’s incomprehension. “It is still alive, Hermann!”

“How vile,” Hermann said reflexively. Newton gave him a disappointed look. 

“You don’t understand,” he said, and turned his gaze to the brain, bright, fervent. “But I do, or I will.”

“You shall learn all manner of unspeakable secrets, I am sure, and speak of them endlessly,” Hermann agreed. “Have you eaten or slept at all?”

“ _Eaten_ it!” Newton said, and took half a step back from the brain. Worse, for a moment his expression went thoughtful.

“No,” Hermann said, holding his hand up swiftly and taking a step forward. “No, nuisance, pray do not even think of it. I meant whether you have eaten any more normal sustenance. A bite of biscuit, of meat, pudding?”

“I have not the time,” Newt said absently. He frowned at the brain and adjusted his glasses. “I must clean it of caustic kaiju blood if I am to preserve it, but without the blood it will not linger long. Perhaps a transfusion …”

“A _hem_ ,” Hermann said. Newton looked quite pale enough already. He cleared his throat. “Perhaps a little sleep would clear your mind,” he tried.

“It really does sound so unscientific, _kaiju blood,_ ” Newt mused, not paying attention. He picked up a scalpel and tapped it musingly against his hand. “ _Hemo serpentarum_? We should never have saddled them with such an inconvenient name.”

Hermann moved a little closer, as close to the thing as he would countenance, and leaned against the bench, rubbing his leg. “Yours were the first articles, to call them kaiju,” he pointed out. “This is entirely your fault.”

Newton tugged his hand through his hair and grimaced. “It is what Mako called them,” he protested. “When the captain first found her, after – well, after. People called them sea serpents, kraken, but those are largely superstition and these all too real. All the world knows the word kaiju.” His gaze was surprisingly sober, as it rested on the thing. “I suppose if I make no other mark on the world, I have done that.”

“You will make your mark,” Hermann said quietly. He never doubted it.

“And you,” Newt said, looking at him. “We’ll do our part, but in the end …” He shook his head. “Mako Mori has never stopped, never relented. If anyone is going to save the world it’s her.” His eyes blazed with a more normal type of belief. “She can do it.”

Hermann went so far as to clasp his shoulder. “With our help, Dr Geiszler, with our help.”

Newt smiled at him, then glanced at the door. He pulled off his gloves, stretching his fingers idly in a few exercises. “Hey Hermann,” he said, “what are the chances of anyone reporting with an injury at this time of night?”

Hermann stopped and calculated. “Slim,” he said. “Between three and five percent; few watchmembers are on-shift, and they’ve learned not to keep their more minor injuries secret until it gets worse, these days.” That was a good thing Newt had done.

“Excellent,” Newton said breezily, and pulled off his apron, tossing it to a corner. He stepped forward, cupping Hermann’s chin in his hand. “So if I wanted to get on my knees for you here and express my appreciation for your darling attempts to take care of me, we’d have some privacy.”

Appreciation? Newton’s gaze was direct, almost fond, his fingers lingering warm against Hermann’s jaw and just slightly brushing his throat. “The numbers – agree with you,” Hermann said.

Newt smiled, shaking his head. He stepped closer, into Hermann’s space, so their bodies were pressed together, a warm line of contact. “And you,” he said softer, releasing his grip on Hermann’s face to rest his hand on his shoulder. “Do you agree?”

Hermann avoided his gaze, feeling the heat come to his face, his uncontrollable reaction. Oh, it was rare enough for Newton to be this forward outside of the dim light of one of their rooms that he was helpless against it. Not that he remotely wished to stand against it. He was as careful and rigorous a person as he could manage but he yearned and he craved and he wanted.

He looked up. “The hypothesis must be tested,” Hermann said, voice shaking only a little.

Newton smiled and kissed him, eyes closing as he brushed their lips together. Hermann made a small helpless noise into his mouth and pressed closer. Surely he was doing this wrong, after a week or two since they had kept each other company this way, surely he had forgotten the trick of it and Newton would notice his teeth were too clumsy and his lips thin, notice any of the things wrong with him. But Newton pressed in hungry, too, hand skating over his shoulder and the other resting on his side, kissing him half like they were waltzing.

From Newt’s businesslike kisses, the wander of his hands, he intended to escalate this very fast. Hermann tried to close his eyes into it, but his gaze caught, held, and he put a hand on Newton’s chest, making a very small amount of space between them. Newton pulled back with a sigh, and looked at him expectantly with eyes heavy-lidded, lip swollen.

The sight of him was enough to drive men mad, and Hermann did not remotely have the ability to word what he wanted. “Can you, ah—” he said and waved over his shoulder.

“Mm?” Newt said distractedly. He glanced behind him and gave a slight start, as though he had forgotten the giant segment of brain was there, or sincerely not thought Hermann might find it offputting. “Oh. Well.” He pulled the tarp from Hermann’s desk and draped it over the thing with a flourish. “There, that shouldn’t hurt it.”

“Is that really foremost on your mind—” Hermann said, snapping it a very little, and stopped when Newt turned and walked back to him and dropped to his knees, to begin pressing small kisses to his thighs, busy and hungry.

Hermann clutched at his head and put thoughts out of his mind, as Newton’s mouth pressed warm against his skin through his breeches, as his hands reached to toy with the buttons. Hermann shifted back, leaning against the table. It was a little too low to really work.

But Newton looked so beautiful knelt before him like that.

“Wait,” Hermann said, reluctantly, and Newton looked up at him, pouting a little. “I can’t—” and he waved a hand, irritable, did not want to be made to say it.

Newton nodded rapidly and sprung to his feet, not seeming to mind the interruption: Hermann wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or insulted. “Hold on,” he said. He skirted around the brain and drew out Hermann’s chair, towing it over to him, kicking it helpfully nearby. He all but pushed Hermann into the chair in his eagerness, hands on his shoulders, an insult Hermann would allow when Newton dropped to his knees again immediately after to smile up at him through lowered lashes. “There?”

Hermann nodded: it would more than do. Newton was close, so close, and Hermann rested a hand in his hair gently. How sweet it would be simply to stroke his hair when not in situations such as this, tuck it behind his ears when he became excitable and forgot to groom it. He put that too out of his mind. “I am—” _Sorry_ scraped on his throat like reluctance, it was not true or his fault.

“You’re fine,” Newton said. “You are very fine.” He undid one button then the other, kissed and licked his way delicately down.

“Newton,” Hermann said and then nothing else when Newton swallowed him down.

He tugged at his hair in encouragement, and urgency, and Newton made agreeable noises every now and again, bent on his task. Hermann had a slight and dismal suspicion about what made him so excitable, exactly - still he was not complaining, and Newt when he moved back for air murmured, “Hermann, _Hermann_ ,” like he was coming apart, so, so.

Hermann curled his fingers in Newt’s hair and closed his eyes; just the two of them, on this whole ship, just Newton wanting to do this to him, for him. His mouth, warm, his hand resting on Hermann’s thigh, fingers splayed; Hermann gripped his hand and came apart in his mouth with less warning than he should have given, gasping. 

Newt leaned his head against Hermann’s knee. Hermann patted fingers vaguely through his hair as he came back to himself, and after half a minute glanced down at him. Newt grinned back and swarmed up into his lap, bracing one hand on the table so Hermann didn’t take his full weight, to kiss him hungrily.

Hermann kissed him, and Newton writhed in his lap, twisting against him. Well enough. He murmured, “You wonder, you darling,” because Newton was beautiful like this, beautiful with that light in his eyes, beautiful. Hermann stroked at him with calm steady motions of one hand, murmuring praises in his ear, Newt seemingly content to writhe helplessly in his lap, panting, until he came with a wordless little sound and leaned his forehead against Hermann’s, eyes closed, chest heaving, content. 

The reprieve lasted nowhere near long enough. Newton’s eyes drifted open, and he stretched. “I do think I shall be able to sleep now,” Newton said, and glanced at the covered brain. “Perhaps a little later.”

There was a new sharpness to his gaze, more signs of his usual focus, so the break had helped in at least some manner. “Mm,” Hermann said. “That’s … good.” He was not sure whether to feel happy or used. 

“That was because I wanted to do it,” Newton said, tugging sharply at his shirt so Hermann looked at him. Newton did up his buttons and sniffed. “It is always because I want to.”

They had never put in words the attraction between them, and it seemed were not about to start now, Newton’s eyes sliding away as he stood up and brushed himself off. 

Hermann wanted to ask, wanted badly, it burned at his tongue. _Are you still angry at me? Why were you angry at me?_ But that would achieve nothing but to break this brittle peace between them, and beside, Newton’s brief focus on him had burned out.

Newton glanced at him still sitting there, and frowned. “I’ll be a gentleman and walk you back to your room,” he said.

He did feel boneless, not unpleasantly so. Perhaps just this once. “Thank you,” Hermann said. 

It was good to have an excuse to hold on to his arm as they made their way back to their quarters, quiet and careful. There were not too many people about, and besides, it did not matter so much, what people thought or suspected, these days when the world was ending.

Newton stopped at his door, and it was regrettably clear that he himself had no plans of sleeping. Hermann entered and then stopped, looking back at him, Newton with his hair tousled and his face somewhere far away. 

He did not like that look in his eyes. At the same time, he liked it far too well.

“Newt, be careful,” he said.

“I would rather be brilliant,” Newton replied, and gently closed his door.


	6. Chapter 6

The mood at the captain’s table was grim. Mako laid the papers containing her orders on the table with careful precision. It was not like her to share such things with her subordinates unless necessary, but these were not ordinary times.

Newton said, trying for good cheer, “Well, at least they believe your nonsense about the emergence point, Hermann.”

“Dr Gottlieb when we are at table,” Hermann said automatically, and Newt just grinned at him, jabbing him with one elbow. Hermann rubbed his side with a grimace. He wished Mako hadn’t continued Pentecost’s habit of seating them next to each other. “Captain, if I may ask, why are you telling us this?”

Even at captain’s table the food was fairly dismal this far from port and this long into the war: pickled cabbage and ship’s biscuit sliced thinly to try and make it look more appealing, with one last side of preserved pork taking up pride of place. It was food and would sustain them. Tonight, no one had touched it, though some of the younger midshipmen certainly eyed the meat hungrily.

“The Fleet is to post ships guarding your charted emergence point, above the trench,” Mako said, tapping the papers with one finger. Her face was stern. “They are to attack any kaiju that emerge, and if possible directly assault whichever cavern they come from, as much as technology can allow.”

Hermann twitched at the possibilities. His specialty was the heavens, not the depths, but early on in their acquaintance, with Dr Geiszler’s correspondence entrancing him with tales of the alien realms of their own world, he had daydreamed of constructing more resilient and functional diving suits, armoured against the depths and pressure, to send some emissary down. Newton, surely, would delight at the chance to look for monstrous fish and creatures of the deep …

But they were not to join the expedition.

“I am sure the _Striker_ and the _Czernobog_ and this other ship, this _Typhoon_ , can weather any challenge that occurs,” Hermann tried. The mood still was grim, and he sighed. “It is … it is no small honour to be tasked with guarding the coastlines if any beasts get through.”

“It is busywork,” Mako said matter-of-factly. They all stared at her. She drew the papers back, tucking them into her coat. “The admiral is wasting the potentials of our _Jaeger_ as a fighting ship. It is not an indulgence humanity can afford.” She looked at Hermann. “The winds should allow us an adequate course to reach your trench without risking the trade routes, I believe?”

“I … certainly, that can be done,” Hermann said as if on autopilot, a little appalled. “ _Captain_.”

Her gaze tugged at him sharp as a fishhook. “Do you protest?” And she looked all around the table, at Hermann and Newton and Tendo and Raleigh and all her other officers crammed into the cabin, all her crew. “I will not take you if you will not go,” she said, fiercely, “but I am going.”

Mako was acting directly against the Fleet’s orders, her father’s orders. Hermann staggered over it, but these were desperate times.

The silence was awful. He struggled, in his mind, then looked at her. _If anyone is going to save the world._ “I do not protest,” he said. “They are coming more often.” He glanced at Newton. “And are larger, more formidable every time, I believe.” Newt nodded, his face serious for once. Hermann sighed, rubbing at his forehead: his head ached persistently, for who had time to relax in the end of days? “I do not think it will be only one beast at a time they need to fight, out there with no chance to renew their supply or fix any damage. I think it will be two or three or even more, fearsome giants of the sea. I fear they will all fall and so will we, and what is left of our shattered Fleet, until there is not even that thin line of defence to protect humanity’s vulnerable coasts from the ravaging of beasts.”

His voice was brisk and matter-of-fact as he recounted the scenario, and fell upon the audience like a tidal wave. Midshipman Suresh, his own quite brave apprentice, swallowed hard and looked faintly ill. The other midshipmen were little better, Namani frowning fiercely to hide her fear. Even Tendo sucked on his lip and looked concerned. All were some degree or other of afraid aside from Becket, whose gaze rested steady on Mako, as it had more or less since they met. 

Newton nudged him hard. “Doomsayer,” he said in an undertone.

Hermann looked around the grim table and sat upright: oh, it was due to him, and he had not in fact answered her question, though surely that had been answer enough. “So,” Hermann said. “Yes.” He looked at Mako and gave a firm nod. “I support your plan.” He gave a thin grin, the best he could manage. “In this case insubordination is a lesser treason than, than allowing an apocalypse.”

“I’m game,” Newton said, and Tendo said, “Like we’d let _Striker_ get all the fun,” and Raleigh laughed, and there was a grim kind of good humour around the table. Mako did not relax, not for a second, not an inch, her shoulders still straight and eyes solemn, but she smiled around at all of them, and lifted her knife to at last cut up the pork that they may eat and share this fragile determined bravery for at least as long as the meal lasted.

Hermann left after only the first glass of wine, his stomach full and thoughts churning. Newt followed after him, easily catching up.

Newt caught his elbow and gave it a rough squeeze. “You’re welcome,” he said abrasively. “I hope you realise how fortunate you are in having me to inform you when you’re being a tremendous idiot and ruining the conversation with dour prophecies.”

“Yes, you’re a master of the social graces,” Hermann said tiredly. He shook himself free. “Leave me be, nuisance, I need to chart our course.”

Newton did not grab him again, but his hands clenched into fists. “I have asked you not to call me that,” he said, through gritted teeth.

It had been absentminded: still Hermann regretted it, when he was normally cautious about these things, and always tacitly relieved when Newt respected his own firm lines. “Of course,” he said and leaned on his cane. They were alone, for the moment, in this corridor. “Forgive me. May I ask why? You have called me far worse things,” he added dryly.

Newton didn’t look him in the eye, but glanced away, his face half in shadow in this dim light. His hair was a tousled mess, of course, as ever, and Hermann itched to smooth it down, to tidy him into something respectable.

Newton said, “It makes it sound like you are fond of me.”

“Ah,” Hermann said. His throat felt tight. Newt’s voice was so scornful and dismissive, repulsed by the idea. “Well, we … can’t have that.” He took his glasses off and polished them, looking down.

“Indeed,” Newton said curtly, crossing his arms, still not facing him. “Much as you have accused me of wild speculation, I am concerned only with things that are true.” He gave him a glance, blurrily. Hermann put his glasses back on. Newton’s expression resolved, of course, into irritation. “I must pursue my work. I suppose you also have some minor tasks to attend to. Can you retrieve your materials from my surgery and do it elsewhere?”

“Certainly,” Hermann said. His hip gave a pulse of pain, radiating down through his thigh, up into his side to curl under his ribcage. He ignored this. “I shall fetch them directly, and gladly leave you to your pointless butchery.”

Newton nodded and strode off ahead, not waiting for him or matching his slower pace. Hermann followed, lips pressed thin.

Of course things grew more strained and taut the more monsters rose from the sea; still, it was a new low that they could not even work together, when they always had before. Hermann filed that away and refused to grieve for it until he had the time. There was so much else to grieve for. What did the loss of one strained working relationship matter?

He grabbed as many of his maps and parchment as he could carry at one time, with Newton standing arms crossed waiting for him to leave. He tried not to take notice of anything else in the room, when it was not his business to wonder what the devil Newton needed all this tubing for, but he could not keep from sniffing derisively at some of it, in his irritation.

He walked stiffly, quickly back to his room, and laid his maps out, and set to charting a course that would take fair advantage of the winds without venturing on the main trade routes and exposing their movements to the Fleet’s notice and scrutiny.

Normally Hermann could enter into a focus where the only thing that mattered was the world represented in idealised form, lines and figures on the page. Normally the sublime wonder of cartography overtook him quite and he felt fully as precise and sharp a tool for this purpose as were his compasses and pencils and scales.

Tonight every rock and creak in the ship’s boards made him stop and glance out as if it would be Newton returning to his room, though it never was. And Hermann could not keep his gaze from going occasionally to his bed, where they had sometimes lain; lain in lovemaking, but also merely curled up close together, some nights, taking comfort from the company, wordlessly holding each other as balm against the worry and fear. Hermann’s mind, a precise tool and merciless, held up memories of Newt laughing or smiling at him fond, the way his eyes crinkled or his broad improbable grin, and contrasted them against far more vivid and recent memories of Newton snapping at him, sharp, turning away, too vast a distance for Hermann to surmount when none of this was what he was made for.

Hermann at last put his pencil down with the work only half done, and rested his head in his hands. It _mattered_ , despite his best efforts. Newton mattered and what they had or perhaps no longer had, what Hermann wanted: it all mattered, so much, and he could not think for the yearning that choked up into his throat, could not find focus when so drowned by sorrow.

The ship tossed, creaked in the waves. After a long while the intensity of feeling faded, ebbing away into merely a pang, a sharp ache that was no less unbearable than the rest of his pains. Newton had not returned to his room for the night, though the hour was late. Hermann took off his glasses and dried his face, and put his glasses back on, and went back to work.

There was so much in this shattered world he could not change. Nonetheless he would batter himself against the walls of improbability, the most brittle imaginable battering ram, until he changed the outcome or broke in the trying. What else could any man do?

 

*

 

Again the guns thundered, every cannon in concert, the stubby guns along port and starboard and long guns to the fore, sending their ammunition spiralling off to splash into the distant ocean, the air filling with acrid, biting smoke.

“This shall do,” Mako said, and Hermann nodded, straining to hear her. She traced his proposed route with one finger and nodded, tucking the map under her arm. He tried not to feel a pang: he knew she was a more than competent navigator, he would not be possessive of his maps, of all things. “We should make it to the Trench within a week if the winds are kind.”

His possessiveness eased slightly. “Indeed,” he said. “Swiftly calculated, if I may say so, sir.”

Mako nodded, but he thought perhaps she was pleased. It might have merely been the neatness of the shooting exercise that pleased her: hard to justify the waste of shot, but worthwhile if they could strike with such precision and venom when the time came to fight. 

Raleigh Becket strode up and down the ship, talking to the heads of the gunner crews, a picture of competence and energy as he inspected each gun and the piles of shot. His movements were no longer at all slowed or constrained by the scarring he’d obtained in the fight on the _Anchor_ , and Hermann was glad. At least some wounds could be recovered from. 

“Captain!” a voice shouted, tinny and high-pitched in the echo after the guns, and familiar. Mako and Hermann turned as Newton rushed up out of the hatch.

Hermann started back a step, staring at him. Newton looked far worse even than when Hermann had seen him last, less than twelve hours ago. His hair was a mess, his eyes huge and staring, and his skin here and there stained blue. His arms moved in wild gestures. Mako stood solid in the face of this, but Hermann could hear Becket murmur, “What’s wrong with him?” and bristled.

“Yes, Dr Geiszler?” Mako said, inclining her head. 

Newt rushed up to her, not sparing Hermann a glance. He ran his fingers quickly through his hair, leaving new blue streaks there, and grinned at her, devoid of mirth or joy, a sheer rictus expression born from nervous energy. “Your plan will not work, that snail’s place, we need to go swiftly if we are to reach there in time or they are doomed,” he said very fast.

He was so pale his tattoos looked painted on, so pale his veins stood out blue against his skin. “Have you been eating enough?” Hermann said reflexively. Mako gave him an odd look.

“Never mind that, and explain what you mean,” she said. Newton opened his mouth, and she held up one hand and added, “Slowly.”

He frowned in clear frustration, one foot jittering, but said slowly, “I conducted – experiments, the nature of which does not matter. But we need to go faster. Trust me. The trade routes will do, it does not matter if the Fleet sees us disobeying orders, or not for long because those ships _will_ perish if they are not warned, and so will the rest of us.”

“Details,” Mako said, implacably, though Hermann thought she might be becoming annoyed. Still, she knew how to handle the crew, even Newt. Mostly.

Right now he looked so flyaway and wild Hermann was not even sure he recognised him. He glared at Mako, waved his hands and nearly shouted, “ _It can fly_.”

Becket, who had approached by now, stared at Newt like he’d gone mad. Hermann, meanwhile, looked at him with growing dread. If anyone knew the capabilities of these awful creatures it was Newton. 

“Go on,” Mako said, after a moment.

Newt hopped from one foot to the other, gave another wave of his arm, babbled, “The third one that Hermann predicted, it will certainly be there, and it can fly, it can outpace them, none of them can match the _Jaeger_ for speed – please! We have to get there! I have to get there, please.”

Mako frowned at him, clearly doubtful. Her strength of character was as comforting as ever, but Hermann thought perhaps she wavered. Mako trusted her crew and wanted to get to the action fast in any case, and the air burned with the agitating smell of gunpowder. “Dr Gottlieb?” she said, and unrolled the chart. “Help me reconsider our route.”

“Wait,” Hermann said, frowning. Newton gave him a look so full of spite that it was startling, and he frowned back. “I do not doubt your brilliance,” he told him sternly, “but you know you are prone to leaps of intuition. Where are you getting this from?”

“The brain,” Newton said. “I, directly from the brain.”

Hermann felt dizzy, and swayed. Mako caught his arm, and he flushed angrily and stood upright, pulling a little away from both of them. “What would persuade you to do such a thing?” he snapped. He gripped Newt’s shoulder and shook it. “And why? How?”

“It called to me,” Newt said, matter-of-factly, and then glared at him, though he made no move to brush Hermann’s hand from his shoulder. “And I will be the saviour of you, of all of us through this knowledge, so do not continue to treat me as though my work does not matter,” he said savagely, and then he collapsed.

One moment he stood with his shoulder warm under Hermann’s hand, and then he was flat on the deck, head hitting against it with a sharp thud. Hermann stared down at him, appalled, and did not move even though he should, to help him, Newt needed help. “Newt,” he said. “Newton. No. No.”

Becket was there nearly at once, dropping into a crouch, not moving Newt yet but carefully placing a hand under his head so it didn’t hit the deck again, glancing up at Mako for guidance. She dropped down as well at more of a distance, not crowding him, and frowned. “Doctor?” she said with a glance at Hermann.

“He is the doctor,” Hermann said, thinly, but dropped to his knees as well, staring at Newt. He felt for a pulse and exhaled in relief when he found it, sat back on legs that trembled. “He … is he bleeding? No. No. Good. Raleigh, can you feel any wound in the head?” 

Becket looked up at him and after a moment shook his head. Hermann exhaled. “Good. Alright. Can you … help me get him belowdeck?”

Becket gave a quick nod, and lifted Newt up. Hermann took a moment longer to stand and the pain the pain the pain the pain he could not think. Blazing through his legs and burning into his mind. But he could stand it. He was not the one who had fallen like a puppet with his its strings cut.

Mako touched his elbow, and he looked at her with a start. Becket had already moved some steps away, Hermann’s mind whiting out for a moment. “Captain,” he said.

“He was ill?” she said, and frowned after her gunner and scientist. “What I mean is, was he raving?”

Hermann considered it. He felt unsteady, uncertain, shaken. “I do not know,” he said. “I do not know what truth there is to his claims.” Newton had stared at him with such bile, and he had no idea why. He glanced at Mako, almost helplessly. “I fear to lend much credence to his words when he is so overtaken, but the numbers predicted an overwhelming number of kaiju in any case …”

Mako nodded shortly and tucked the maps under her arm, businesslike. “I shall take a faster course,” she said, and Hermann nodded, barely attending to what had seemed vital an hour ago.

“I must—” he said, and she said, “Go.”

It took him longer to catch up to Becket than it should have, each step an effort across the deck, then pausing at the hatch to gather his breath. Down the ladder, down, relying on the strength of his arms. He leaned against the bulwark to catch his breath, closed his eyes against the pain, breathed. Breathed. Opened his eyes. He walked on, and caught up with them a little along the corridor.

Raleigh slowed to match his pace, as he hauled Newton along: it would have been easier to carry him over one shoulder, but Becket had enough strength to drag his unconscious form mostly upright, as though he were merely escorting a drunken friend home. Hermann gave him a quick nod and put an arm around Newton’s waist, though his support was not really necessary.

He was warm, still alive, whatever he had done. Hermann exhaled harshly.

“You’ve never used my first name before,” Becket said over Newt’s head, and Hermann glanced at him. “Or his, where I could hear you. Are you alright?”

Newt warm in his grip, but so slack, so lifeless when before he had been so manically animated. “I’m not the injured one. Nor am I the raving maniac, for that matter,” Hermann said, but felt a pang of guilt: had he driven Newton to this, in some small way? Surely not. It was not in any case as though Newt gave a damn what Hermann thought of him, or ever had, at least not after they met and burned away the idyll of correspondence.

He had a grim suspicion that Becket was in a way carrying both of them, but the man had enough strength to do so, it seemed, so he put that from his mind as well to focus on the task of moving his friend through the ship. They reached the surgery and Becket shifted Newt’s weight a little to open the door.

Inside it looked like the very chamber of nightmare. The brain was uncovered and seemed almost to glow, looking larger with its light, pulsing sickly. The stench in the room was heavy with ammonia and copper.

Hermann shifted a step back, and Becket lurched to account for the change in weight. “No,” Hermann said. It was instinctive, but he had faith in the decision all the same. “No, we must get him away from this thing, at least while we can.”

Becket gave him a curious glance, but nodded. 

Again, again endlessly through the halls, dragging Newton, until they reached his room. Hermann nodded curtly to the door and Becket flung it open, and more carefully laid Newt out on his small bed, in amongst his ominous but at least not actively malevolent looking bottles and jars of samples. Becket did this for Newt far easier than Hermann would be able to even on a day less plagued by pain. He breathed out shakily through his teeth.

“There,” Raleigh said, and looked at him. “I need to make sure we’re ready for real combat.” Uncompromising, but an apology in its own way.

Hermann nodded, to show he understood. He moved aside to let Becket pass. “I have him,” he said, wishing it were true.

Raleigh nodded. He turned Newton over carefully so he lay on his side, head pillowed by his arm.

“Before you must go, can you bring him water?” Hermann said, and sat down on Newton’s sea-chest. Becket left, nausea swarmed through Hermann up from his hip like biting gnats, and before Becket could return he had passed out.

The first thing he noticed when he came back to consciousness was the pounding of his headache, familiar enough to be grounding. 

Hermann opened his eyes and looked reflectively at Newton, laid out on the bed like an invalid, one arm dangling down the side. He was still pale, but the veins did not stand out so violently against his skin, and the inked sea serpents and twining tails inked on his skin looked like their normal garish selves.

Hermann looked up to find Newton’s eyes looking steadily back at him. He startled, but Newt didn’t move, his hazel eyes blank, and after a moment Hermann relaxed. Newt was not wearing his glasses, and might not even be conscious yet.

A jug of water had been placed on the desk. Hermann took it, and when he saw how his hand shook he gulped down a few mouthfuls himself before pouring Newton a cup. He set it on the table and looked at Newt thoughtfully, then picked up his glasses, settling them carefully on his nose. “Newton,” he said quietly.

Newton blinked a few times then looked at him. His eyes still had a glassy aspect, but Hermann had no idea what that signified, medically speaking.

Newton jerked his head at the cup. Hermann nodded and held it carefully to his lips, helping him drink. Newton got half the glass drunk, then pushed Hermann aggressively away, spilling the rest over himself, and sat upright.

At least he was recovered enough to be obnoxious. “What were you thinking?” Hermann snapped again, and stood, too incensed to stay motionless.

Newton’s grin was sharp, angled like a hook. “Too many things to say slow enough for you to understand,” he said. He rubbed at his forehead. “If our places were reversed, I would have congratulated you on your breakthrough by now.”

“It would not have come up,” Hermann started, and Newton smirked, and Hermann glared at him and continued, “—It would not have come up, because I do not push myself to the point of near death! What did you do!”

Newt’s eyes shifted away from him a moment, and he cleared his throat. “You remember we discussed transfusion?”

“You discussed it, I dismissed it,” Hermann said, then took in his pallor with a whole new horror. “You – why, for all love?”

Newt lifted his hand then dropped it back to the blanket, as if the small movement exhausted him: a far cry from his feverish activity earlier. “To be clear, I put my blood in the brain, not its blood in me,” he said and frowned a little vaguely. “Although perhaps some got in. I was in a hurry.”

“That is not science,” Hermann said weakly. He could think of no stronger condemnation to give. 

Newton frowned at him, eyes still huge and strange. “I needed to know what would happen,” he said. “I needed to. Besides, you looked so tired.”

“What?” Hermann said more weakly still. He leaned rather heavily against the table.

Newton stared up at him, then shook his head, toying with the bedclothes. “Clearly you were not going to provide any proper scientific counsel, so someone had to pick up the slack,” he said. He shifted, restless. “I had to. We have learned such things. I have glimpsed such things, the world beyond, beneath – no,” quickly, to himself, “no, I am not meant to tell you of that.”

“Newton?” Hermann said uncertainly. Rarely had he felt so entirely unwelcome here, and it was not that Newt was trying to make him so; rather Hermann felt excluded and unnecessary in this strange space with Newt’s strange mood, an alien here. “You are not … You are not yourself.”

Newt shook his head, not looking at him, and grinned, a pale shadow of a thing. “I can learn more, if I do it again.”

Hermann strode forward and grabbed him by the collar, not hard but urgently. “You must not! I forbid it!”

Newt looked up at him, slack and unresisting in his grip, and curled his lip in contempt. “I knew you would not understand,” he said, and lightly brushed Hermann’s hand off and away from him. “Leave me.”

Hermann clutched his cane instead, staring helplessly at him. How much blood had he lost, exactly? He shook his head. “I am not going to leave you—”

Newton’s hand moved quick, barely visible, darting into a cabinet, and coming out with a sharp little gleam of metal. He held it out, his grip steady, his gaze on Hermann.

“Leave me be or I’ll take this knife to one or both of us,” he said. He grinned, barely a grin, just flashing his teeth. “Leave him, little human.”

Hermann stared at him, and then stepped back, back again. He stumbled through the door and slammed it shut, and stood there, silent. 

He had never in life been scared of Newton before, only scared for him. It was strange to be both.


	7. Chapter 7

The most aggravating aspect of naval combat was the extended periods of time with nothing that could be done. Namani up in the crow’s nest sighted lights at the small fleet’s expected position sometime around 5 am, the small gold pinpricks of lanterns and a dim glow of blue. The _Jaeger_ adjusted heading slightly to make for them.

And then they sailed, all through the day. 

After sunrise the ships could be seen by their sails, small white triangles growing slowly closer, but that was all. The kaiju were underwater, or too closely coloured like the ocean to be seen, or not there at all; the ships were in more or less the correct position, and none had sunk, but nor was there any reply to the signal flags Mako ordered. Something was not right.

Hermann stood ondeck for twenty minutes as noon approached, as they beat against the wind, toward the other ships. Through his glass he could make out some detail, but not enough. That was the _Czernobog_ , but he did not know the _Typhoon_ to look at it, and if the third ship was the _Striker_ it was too hidden by the other’s bulk to make out. 

He lowered the glass and glanced to one side. His mouth tugged down disagreeably when he realised he had half been expecting for Newton to be at his side, trying to snatch the glass from him, scanning the sea eagerly for kaiju.

Something was not right.

When his eyes itched and his staring brought the ships no closer, he went belowdeck, and knocked very cautiously on the door of Newton’s surgery. When there was no response, he pushed it cautiously open.

The brain was covered up right now, at least, as Newt inspected a section of kaiju skin that glowed faintly like fireflies were studded into the leather. He had not cleaned the bench of his work yet, or even washed any of his tools.

Hermann cleared his throat. “Would you like my help during the battle?” he said, and Newton made a small, dismissive noise as he cut into the section of skin. “I mean if there are any wounded, Newton.”

Newt made an incision and shook his head. “I’ll have better things to do,” he said absentmindedly. Hermann frowned.

This was not like him. But saying that was not likely to achieve anything. Hermann shrugged, and shifted his grip on his cane. “I shall do my best on my own, then.”

Now Newt looked up at him sharply, blinking, as if coming awake. “You’ll be hopeless,” he said, and then looked down at the skin sample with a sigh. “I’ll … try. I’ll try. If there are wounded.” He frowned down at his hand, stretching out the fingers, turning it at different angles. “Do you ever wonder whether perhaps you learned everything far far too fast, and if you’re not careful some of it’s going to fall out?” He canted his head to one side, shaking it, as though to pour something out of his ear. “What if I don’t even remember all my own memories? What if I forget the ones I do have?”

“How hard did you hit your head?” Hermann said, in real alarm, and Newton blinked at him again then laughed.

“Not dangerously so; never fear,” Newt said, and then looked with interest at the bulge in Hermann’s jacket where he had tucked the glass. “Shall we go up?”

At the ladder Newt braced Hermann’s elbow briefly with one hand, easy and thoughtless like they fitted together. Hermann tried not to think about this, as he hauled himself up and scrutinised the situation. The ships had grown perhaps a little closer. Mako stood near Tendo at the wheel, her arms crossed behind her back, staring ahead. They had a full spread of sail, billowing, the wind behind them now. 

The _Jaeger_ came in fast, setting the timbers of the ship creaking, but not fast enough for comfort.

“Lend me your eye,” Newt said grandly. Hermann scoffed but passed him the glass, and Newt held it up to his eye, peering out. He swayed easily with the motion of the ship. “Engaged in battle, by all that smoke,” he murmured. “I can’t see her … ah. There, she’s breaching. And there.” He lowered the glass again, and tossed it from hand to hand, frowning. “Two kaiju at least.”

Hermann rescued the glass from out of his hands before Newt could destroy it. “Only two?”

“So far.”

Hermann peered out from the glass, for something to do, then tucked it sharply beneath his jacket again. The semblance of closeness was maddening, to lower the glass and see once more only small white triangle sails on the horizon. “We should find somewhere out of the way, to wait.”

Newt, rarely, nodded and did not argue.

Hermann paced now and again, when his leg cramped, and otherwise stood by the railing and frowned out. Newton was a fixed unmoving point, watching, watching, as the Jaeger raced toward her fellow ships so fast the timbers groaned in complaint. It was not pressed to breaking point, not quite. Mako knew this ship.

At around two pm by Hermann’s watch, they were close enough to hear the boom of the cannon, and then in another half hour they came upon the ships rapidly, rapidly, the Jaeger’s speed showing at last. 

Mako barked orders: the topsails taken in, hands to man the guns and others to watch for any sailors overboard as they raced in to the combat. The prow of the Jaeger turned to come up wide and ready, presenting a beautiful broadside. 

Newton clutched at Hermann’s shoulder, and Hermann passed the glass to him. By now he could see what he needed to see well enough with his naked eyes. The Striker was drifting, its speed not enough to protect it, and the _Czernobog_ pulled up beside with ropes cast over her bows, helping the survivors. The _Typhoon_ held the two kaiju off with her double rows of cannon, but surely could not for long.

Two of the things, monstrous, writhing, hard to tell one from the other as they twisted under the water or emerged again with water streaming from their jaws to bite at the ship. The _Typhoon_ with a heave of her oars pulled free from the one beast’s biting jaws and fired her long guns into the side of the other with a solid, fleshy impact and a puff of steam where they hit, but could not angle for a broadside.

“Neither has wings,” Hermann said, with a sick, slow feeling. He glanced at his co-worker, who momentarily lowered the glass.

Newt mouthed, ‘Wait,” and then turned to scanning the seas around them.

“Strange waves to the south,” Tendo Choi called. His hands were quick and sure on the wheel, just fast enough to keep up with Mako’s rapid orders.

Newton swerved to face the south, glass to his eye, then lowered it. “She’s breaching,” he said, and then scarcely a moment later, “Nearly airborne already, merciful God.”

Hermann gripped the rail hard and watched a quarter a mile away as the long, spiny, undulating back – like an eel, a snake, a serpent – breached the waves, lifting higher, coming on fast with the thrashing of its tail. Mountains of leather unfolded from its back, stretching, heaving out: vast wings, angled flat as the creature came on, starting to beat, once, twice, water cascading off the leathery surface so rainbows caught and shimmered in the mist they made. 

Faster and faster it came, close enough Hermann could make out its long and narrow face, the gaping cavern of teeth like an eel, folded-in flaps for ears more like that of a bat. Then it was flying higher, lifting up, up, tail lashing the air behind it, and then it was upon them.

And then over, the vastness of its wings making a shadow pass over the ship like a cloud. There was sunlight in Hermann’s eyes again as the winged kaiju flew rapidly toward the distant shore. 

Mako shouted something he could not decipher and the side guns fired in a rippling succession, one-two-three-four-five, half firing off into the sea as Tendo brought the ship rapidly about, two or three hitting solidly into kaiju flesh with bursts of blue blood and a high piercing screech from the kaiju as one ball tore a hole through its wing.

“After it!” Mako shouted, “Our highest speed,” and midshipmen raced amongst the rigging as crew hauled at ropes. The deck was transfigured into an ivory castle as the sails spread, caught the wind, billowed, and with her bow slicing through the waves the Jaeger sped gamely into chase.

Mako herself ran to the long nines at the fore, helping the gun crews aim straight and true. Both cannonballs impacted, one passing through the creature’s wing and one hitting hard into its belly. The kaiju stalled and flared its wings, circling back, screeching, bearing down on them.

Hermann braced himself, wary of the angry lash of its tail, its gaping mouth full of tiny narrow fangs. With a pulse of its throat, _something_ sprayed onto the fore of the ship, coating the figurehead and the first two metres in from the prow, splattering the ends of the front guns so the crews and Mako with them had to leap back. 

The slimy coating began at once to sizzle and hiss. It was thick and bilious blue, the colour of kaiju blood made muddied.

“That is not normal at all,” Newton said in his ear, sounding delighted.

“Some kind of acid …?” The dark sickly fluid was strange to see come from the violently colourful creature. Violent: the acid hissed and spat as it ate through the deck, chewed slow holes through the iron of the cannon. Young Jinhai jumped back from the affected area with a yell, clutching his arm as if burned.

“We should find the properties of that. How to treat it,” Hermann said. The winged beast followed its attack with a lash of its tail against the ship as it soared by, scraping the deck, sending crew scattering. Hermann staggered back and fell sprawling. 

“Fantastic manoeuvre; are we the only thing they hunt, are they made for us?” Newton said. Hermann, paying him no mind, got his grazed arm under him and propped himself up enough to draw his pistol.

Newt crouched beside him, grasping his elbow to help him up. “Fine, if you insist, let’s get below,” he said into Herman’s ear. With the rocking of the boat Hermann leaned heavily into his grip, as Newt escorted him to the hatch. “Jinhai!” Newton bellowed.

The young man threw off a salute and waved at his arm, hastily bandaged with cloth, before running to another of the cannon.

“You’re all fools,” Newton said. The shadow of wings passed overhead, and Newton shaded his eyes and stared raptly up, injured crewmembers forgotten.

Mako called crisply, “Crew not at guns or the helm may ready small arms for its next pass.”

Hermann stopped at the hatch, hand on his cane, pistol pointed up. 

“Something about her flight …” Newton murmured, and clutched at his elbow, warm, excited. “Aim for the belly.”

Hermann aimed, fired. The shot went wide, the kaiju already overhead and gone. It was a long while since his marksman days. He lowered the pistol and fumbled to reload. The ship shook wildly as the kaiju swept down, steepling its wings, and with claws digging in landed on the ship.

Timbers creaked and groaned in protest at the weight, darkness falling over the ship as the creature shifted and settled. Hermann swore. Newton’s grip was burningly hot.

“The belly, yes,” Mako shouted from somewhere. “What of the throat?”

“Yes!” Newt hollered. “But not this close—”

No, that would empty acid all over the deck. The creature’s long neck reared around, wings closing in to press hard against them. The mainmast tilted and crumpled and began to fall. It did not fall free of the _Jaeger_ , held in place by the tangle of rigging, but hung ominously over the deck like the sword of Damocles. Mako called, “Becket!”

Raleigh ran up and down the line of guns, talking quick and urgent in the ears of the crews, and they loaded, all in a rush, all together.

“On my mark …” he said and after a moment waved his hand. The cannon went off, all of them, the noise and smoke overpowering in these close confines, and shot thudded heavily against the kaiju, impacting into its side, wing, flesh.

Blood splattered the deck as the creature screeched and leapt into the air, wings beating heavily to lift it aloft, the wind generated from its passage fluttering the sails and sending the mast at last crashing down. Hermann covered his mouth with one hand, pistol pressing against his cheek, and did not tell Newton that his grip was painfully tight: his own eyes too were fixed on the creature, as it came back around.

The kaiju folded its wings a little and dived at them, mouth opening wide, wide, throat inflating ready to spray the whole of the ship with that deadly acid.

Mako at the stern gun aimed, steady, slow, and fired.

The ball ripped through the kaiju’s venom sack and hit heavily into its throat, and it reared back, silent now, wings flaring up, throat working convulsively. Fluid pulsed out of the hole in its throat, first acid, streaming down and hissing into steam as it hit the water, then a bluer and brighter liquid, the familiar sight of kaiju blood.

It screamed again but only a shadow of a scream, breath hissing out through its torn throat. Then it turned, wings labouring heavily, and began to fly away, retreating, tilting closer and closer to the water. Hermann replaced his pistol in his jacket, fetching out his glass. Newton snatched it at once and Hermann leaned attentively close to him as Newton peered out. “She is in the water,” he said after a few more moments. “Swimming. Not too slow, but not fast.” He lowered the glass again, and sighed.

“I trust you are not too disappointed,” Hermann said, with more bite than he’d meant. Newt glanced at him and held the glass out.

“None of our crew have died,” he said. “No, I could not be disappointed.”

Hermann took it, glanced away, mouth ticking down. His mouth was dry with smoke, and he could not quite find the way to apologise.

“Mr Choi,” Mako called, and Tendo threw off a hasty salute as he ran past, holding a bundle of spars in one hand and in the other a swinging bucket of pitch.

“Work on the mast is underway, sir! Should have it cleared within half of the hour!”

Mako’s hands were tucked behind her back, chin straight. “Ready to return to battle?”

He stopped, calculating, as pitch slopped out the top of his bucket. “We won’t get there fast,” he said, “but we can do it. Within the hour.”

“As fast as can be done safely, Mr Choi,” Mako said serenely. Tendo threw off a salute and resumed his headlong run.

Hermann made his aching way down to his cabin, as that hour passed, to be clear of the people doing their busy work: cleaning the acid from the deck, fixing the guns as best could be done, freeing the mask, sawing free what timbers could be salvaged from it and re-rigging the ship to manage with her lesser spread of sail. 

He sat at his desk and listened to the creaking and shouting and sawing overhead, and doodled aimlessly on scrap paper, calculating for wind, for distance, what little he could do. They would make it back to the battlefield in time, he sincerely hoped, but what would they find there?

After that hour he made his way up, brushing his stinging hands on his jacket. Perhaps he could have washed the small wounds, bound them, but when people were fighting and dying it seemed almost gauche to worry over what was practically a grazed knee.

Mako stood resolute as a mast herself, as though she had not moved or flinched all that time, staring steadily ahead to where the _Jaeger_ must go. The makeshift spread of sails billowed with the wind, tugged them forward; the ship made decent way against the waves.

“You will not like it,” Mako said as he came up beside her, and passed him her own looking-glass.

It was less refined, more durable, but that was what was needed during battle. He took it and peered at the battle they sailed toward nowhere near as fast as he would like.

The _Striker_ was sunk, no sign of it, and the _Czernobog_ foundering, perhaps due to the weight of people it had needed to take aboard. Half the Typhoon’s guns had torn lose, horrifically, a gaping hole in its side with slivers of wood standing up like loose teeth where a kaiju had mauled it. From the wild tangle of limbs and teeth, another kaiju had joined the first two, pressing the attack.

But there was another ship there, a game little craft that couldn’t have more than thirty cannon on her, weaving between the emerging limbs of kaiju and firing off bursts of shot and then sailing fast out of range before they could be crushed by the retaliation.

Hermann frowned, quite perplexed. “I do not recognise that ship,” he said. There was no response, and he lowered the glass, looking at Mako. She almost seemed to be smiling.

“My father has relented,” she said. She nodded toward the distant battle, the small triangles of white on the horizon. “That is the _Scrapper_ , a privateer vessel. It is captained by Jacob Pentecost.”

“Jacob—” Hermann said, blinking once or twice.

“My brother,” Mako said.

“Your what!” Hermann said, which was quite unprofessional, but Mako just grinned in earnest. Hermann stared out at where the little ship was holding her own, lost in thought as Newt came up to them and silently took the glass to peer out as well.

A privateer of their own admiral’s bloodline. What would such a man be like? Admiral Pentecost was stern, older but commanding, a figure that commanded respect. “Is he very handsome?” Hermann said without thinking.

Mako hid a laugh behind her hand, and Newton said in nearly a scream, “Could we focus?”

Hermann flinched away, glaring at him. “Yes; certainly,” he said, rubbing pointedly at his ear, partly to hide his flush. “Calm yourself, Dr Geiszler, we are on our way.”

“Towards what, the fight?” Newt said, and frowned and turned to Mako, eyes entreating. “Captain, please, I would like to chase her.”

“Chase … the wounded kaiju?” Mako said, slowly, as if hoping she was incorrect. Newt nodded quick and eager. “I do not think she is the risk at present.”

“No, she was close to death,” Newt said, and stepped forward, waving his arm excitedly. Hermann gently but firmly took the looking-glass from him and tucked it by his side for safekeeping. “But we must pursue. From her flight, from the way she favoured her weight, I believe she was pregnant. We have never seen a juvenile of one of these creatures before. The data would be invaluable! Even to know the process involved—”

“Dr Geiszler,” Mako said, frowning. She held out her hand and Hermann passed her glass back over. She fixed it to her belt. “We must return to the fight, to guard the emergence point. That is the mission.”

“You were just saying another ship has arrived, they will be fine,” Newt said, quick, impatient, as though the lives that could be saved did not matter. Mako shook her head.

“That is two ships to three kaiju,” she said, and frowned at Newton. “And more beasts to emerge soon, surely, by your predictions?”

Newt barely seemed to notice the question. He grasped Hermann’s arm as if for support, staring urgently at Mako. “We must _learn_ ,” he said.

Trying to give the captain orders was not the wisest tactic. Mako stood a little more upright, chin out. “It will not matter what we learn if the last of the Fleet dies here,” she said, brutal. 

Newt’s hand dropped from Hermann’s shoulder, boneless. “Please,” he said, and his eyes burned in his fervour.

Mako glanced briefly at Hermann, an odd look, like she owed him an apology.

“The _Jaeger_ is sailing to battle, and that is final,” she said. “You may take a boat, Dr Geiszler.”

Hermann gripped hard at his cane to steady his balance. Newt stared at Mako, blinking a little, then nodded. “Fine,” he said. “Fine,” and he strode off at once, not to the boats but towards his quarters to secure whatever ghastly supplies were needed.

Mako sighed out, just a little, her shoulders drooping an inch. Then she straightened them again, upright, a figurehead, and strode toward Tendo at the helm.

Hermann stood there as the ship sailed forward, spray now and again flashing into his face and briefly blinding him. He took off his glasses slowly and polished them with a handkerchief, then hooked them back on over his face. It always helped to see things a little clearer.

He made his way towards the captain as Newt scrambled back onboard deck with a pack over his shoulders. Mako glanced at him, and took a step or two away from Tendo. A polite fiction: everyone could hear everything that was said onboard a ship.

“Captain,” Hermann said with no preamble. He added a stiff nod, half a bow. “This mission could lead to his death.”

Tendo glanced at the two of them, then focused on the wheel, hands gripping hard at the spokes. Mako met Hermann’s gaze. “From the way you have often spoken, one would think you’d be pleased with that turn of events, Dr Gottlieb,” she said.

Hermann foundered. Had he? Perhaps. He had not wanted anyone, least of all Geiszler, to know the depth of his feeling, but surely it had been obvious, all the same. Perhaps not obvious enough. Of course, he’d often wished he could throttle some sense into him. “I would not wish ill on any colleague,” he said stiffly.

“To be sure, and to your credit,” Mako said, “but I haven’t noticed you coming to me with concerns for the safety of Mr Becket, or Mr Choi.”

She would never send either of them alone into the jaws of danger – but no, that was unfair. Neither of those gentlemen would insist so strongly to go. Mako looked at him as though she wanted something from him, and he did not want to say.

“…. He may be a nuisance,” Hermann said, raw and low, “but he is my nuisance.” 

That broke through, and Mako took another careful step away from Tendo, a bubble of privacy that threatened to be ruined by the lash of the wind in the sails, the distant echo of cannon as they raced closer to battle. “Believe me, I am unhappy with this,” she said. She shook her head. “He is rash, and will act anyway. This is better than tying him up in the brig.”

“Please,” Hermann said, “let me go with him, I can – row him.”

There was the briefest silence then, before Mako reluctantly said, “We can send an able seaman.” Hermann did not flinch. He very carefully did not flinch.

“I see,” he said. He gripped hard at his cane.

“If we can find one who will go,” Mako said, a little dismally. She looked at Hermann with a furrow in her brow. “I would rather not lose Dr Geiszler, but if we are ever to function as a research vessel again, we cannot risk losing both of you."

“As you said, our deaths do not matter if the Fleet falls in any case,” Hermann said.

It was perhaps a little too sharp. Mako’s face went expressionless, and Hermann winced a little. This was not the way to talk, too emotional, but then again this was an emotional matter, nothing of logic or reason to it. This was a thing he needed to do. Another crewmember would certainly do a better job of the rowing, if one could be found. But no one else knew the sharp turns and dives of Geiszler’s moods as Hermann did.

He said a little helplessly, “Without me the damn fool will get lost.”

Mako looked at him, then turned away. Her voice was a little rough as she said, “Good luck,” and then cleared her throat. “We have beasts to kill.”

“Good luck to you,” Hermann said, meaning it, and went off with a certain grim pleasure to tell Newt the bad news.


	8. Chapter 8

Newton seemed content merely with tossing his bulging bag of materials onboard the jollyboat then waving impatiently for Hermann to board it. It would be wiser to lower the boat and then themselves after, but that was not the issue at hand.

“Come to the galley and help me fetch proper supplies,” Hermann said stiffly, and Newton heaved an exaggerated sigh at him.

“Some biscuit, some meat, yes, yes, you can carry that yourself,” he said, but fell into step obediently as Hermann made his way across the deck. His leg admonished him for all the activity, hip pulsing with every step. There would be no rest for him today.

There would be no rest for any of them, rushing about the deck, trimming sails here and adjusting ropes there to make the most of the wind and arrive in time, a whole battle Hermann would not be party to. He would do little good in this fight, he knew, but it chafed him not to at least try, felt strange that he would not be standing on the deck pistol in hand when they reached the kaiju. 

Newt accompanied him to the mess only impatiently. He stood by the side with one leg jittering, as Hermann peered around and took only the items most necessary.

“Are you taking half the galley!” Newt burst, after barely a minute.

“I am packing lemon juice,” Hermann said. “We have not come this far only to die of scurvy.”

“It’ll only be half a day,” Newton said, with staggering optimism. “But I shall bow to your medical expertise, of course, herr Gottlieb. You must surely know more of the field than I.” He added, “Can we have coffee?”

Hermann set the cask of juice down and pinched his nose, counting silently through several of his favourite equations until he calmed his temper. “If you can find a way to bring an oven onboard a jollyboat, certainly,” he replied.

“I could think of something—”

“No,” Hermann said, and shoved the cask into his hands. Newt to his credit staggered only a little. 

Back ondeck the battle had come closer already, and every mile they sailed took them further from Newton’s quarry, made smaller the chances of a future rendezvous with the Jaeger if their mad mission succeeded. Hermann spared only a frowning glance at the ships on the horizon before hustling Newton over to properly load the boat.

After all their supplies were loaded, still a scanty amount for a mission alone, Newton bounded up without a trace of hesitance to settle down on one bench. 

Quite aside from how busy everyone was, Hermann found he did not want to be lowered into the boat after it had been placed, after all. Not when Newton would swarm down quick as thinking and Hermann would have to suffer a bosun’s chair. “This will serve,” he said, legging stiffly in.

Newt grinned and moved across to make space for him. “You unbend at last, you old dinosaur,” he said. “Don’t worry; this shall be a grand adventure.”

“I am nearly certain we are the same age,” Hermann said, and did not even address the rest of his folly.

Becket came over with the crew from one of the guns, six people. He nodded shortly at Newton, gave a larger, sympathetic grimace to Hermann, then waved his people forward. With a heaving and a hauling, the small boat was hefted up on ropes and swung, held dangling over the side with the water deep blue many metres below. The _Jaeger_ slowed its pace to a crawl, sails folding in.

“Good luck,” Raleigh said, and nodded at his crew. Slowly the ropes let out, lowering the boat down. Hermann caught a glimpse of Raleigh returning to his gun before he and the rest of them were obscured by the hull.

The boat set down, into the water. The movement of the waves was disconcertingly stronger this close. Hermann made busy at the knots then waved a hand brusquely up, and after a moment the ropes were pulled up again.

He reached for an oar, but Newt beat him to it, slotting his oars into the oarlocks and bending to row with a will. The little boat pulled, then skimmed away from the looming ship. Hermann watched pensively as the _Jaeger_ set out her sails once more, running before the wind, racing to join the other ships in battle, as Hermann and Newt chased the wounded beast to its den. 

The sight disheartened him, and he looked away, spreading his chart out over his lap and studying it. “As you proposed, we will make for this small island,” he said, tapping the paper, then turning the map so Newt could bend down and see. Barely a speck on the map, rocky, inhospitable, nameless; the only reason it was marked at all was because it was sometimes used to supply. At least it matched the direction the kaiju had fled, and heading for a landmark was a sight better than rowing off into the unknown. “Perhaps she is fleeing there.”

“To keep the infant safe, yes,” Newton breathed, and heaved to his oars. “Oh, this will be a wonder.”

Even a very small sea monster would be more than fearsome enough to spell death for both of them, but Newton had thought of that. Surely. 

He was ever-insistent on throwing himself into the line of fire, putting his life on the line for his work. Time and experience had proved Newt could not be stopped or moved from his course. Why was Hermann here? What idiocy persuaded him to tie his own life to sink or swim with this fool’s?

Newton grinned across at him, eyes bright, hair a mess as always. The exertion flushed his cheeks a healthy red. “Do you think the newborn will be already capable of flight, when we reach it?” he said, and glanced away to keep an eye on their course.

Hermann sighed. 

“We can both row,” he offered after a few minutes. Newt glanced back at him, lifting his eyebrows.

“I must work out this energy somehow,” Newt said nearly reasonably, heaving and pulling steady and effortless. Hermann resented him for things like this at times, when he was sure he had been working with the Fleet longer, been at sea longer. It took him too long sometimes to learn the things normal people knew without having to be taught. Stiff, unlikeable, crotchety, no wonder Newt –

Well, it did not matter what Newt thought of him if they both died.

“I trust you to be our navigator, Hermann,” Newton added, and Hermann looked down to the map on his lap, smoothing it out.

“It should not take more than … two or three hours,” he said, a little dismally.

Newt laughed, already a little short of breath. “Alright, we can swap shifts,” he said. “Tell me when it’s been half an hour.” But he pulled, steady and easy, rhythmic, as though fatigue had not yet touched him.

Hermann watched him, when there was nothing else to do. When he realised he was watching him he started and tore his gaze away to look at the blank sea all around them, or up at the cloudless sky, but his eyes always settled back on Newton after a few moments. “How long have you done this?” he said after another few minutes.

Newt did not look up but laughed under his breath as he rowed. “You’re the one who is meant to tell me that.”

Hermann shook his head, twitched the fingers of one hand in a vague gesture. “Rowing,” he said. “Sailing.”

Newton made a thoughtful noise. He looked up but not at Hermann, squinting thoughtfully up at the bright sky. “It’s hard to tell,” he said, and glanced over his shoulder again, a bad habit; it drifted his steering a very slight amount to port, Hermann must remember and account for that. “In a way you could say I was born at sea.”

That would explain at least some of his peculiarities, and Hermann was tempted to believe it. “Literally?”

Newt gave him a slightly affronted look. “No, no,” he said, and heaved at the oars. “I washed ashore as a boy. My parents and uncle found me and raised me, as best they could.”

Hermann sat in quiet thought. The water lapped against the sides of the boats, a calming sound when mixed with the rhythm of Newt’s breaths, an inhale before each stroke, an exhale after. “That is quite peculiar,” he said.

Newton nodded absentmindedly. “That is what I spoke of the other day, learning things too fast,” he said. He looked up at him, his aspect agitated. “Do you wish to know about it, truly?”

“If you wish to tell,” Hermann said after a moment.

“You will not think me strange?” Newt pressed.

Hermann twitched a smile, at that, as he so often could not help smiling around this man. “It is hard to think what could make you seem stranger than you do already.”

“Ha,” Newt said, and rowed in silence for a few minutes. “They fished me up out of the water, and I could not speak yet, though I mostly understood,” he said. “I learned German in less than a year. Then I learned English not long after that, once I realised that for better or worse that was the language most often used at sea and in scientific documents. Aside from Latin.”

“It would strain my belief if you had learned Latin as well that year, yes,” Hermann said, a little guardedly. He had always known Newton to be an unlikely creature, but he had not suspected an origin anywhere near this starkly improbable.

Newton snorted. “Of course not,” he said. “That was the year after.” He dipped an oar too shallowly and muttered under his breath as he paddled hard at the other side to make up for the drifting, then returned to his rhythm.

“You have been publishing for many years,” Hermann said, after Newton did not immediately fill the silence as he usually would.

“Yes; I went to study at what I am told is quite a young age, studied all I could get my hands on, really. Science and natural history, then medicine. And then the kaiju came, and I knew what it had all been _for_ , I knew this was what I had worked towards, why I had needed to learn so much, so fast. What I was here for.”

Hermann looked down at his map, for something to do. He assured himself they were still heading in the right direction, as that was one of the very few things he could be sure of.

He had never really meant it when he accused Newton of not knowing which side he was on, of sympathy for the kaiju, but his interests certainly took on a more ominous cast when combined with the fact that he had washed up ashore with no memory and nothing to his name but _need_.

At least Hermann had always known this about him, his implacable drive, but he was not sure whether he admired or feared it.

Newton looked perfectly normal as he rowed, sweat starting to bead on his forehead now from the exercise. The sea serpents and monsters inked on his arms and down his neck glistened with it.

Hermann folded his hands on his lap. “Have you ever thought what might have caused all this?” he tried. Newton glanced up at him with a slight frown, not of displeasure, more as though he’d been pulled out of some reverie. Hermann twisted his fingers anxiously. “Have you not stopped to wonder how you came to have such a strong passion for, for a field of study that did not even exist yet?”

Newt frowned across at him, and it seemed like thoughts flickered behind his glasses in those hazel eyes, brow creased in thought. Hermann smiled hesitantly: praise every blessed thing if he had managed to make Newton actually think about it.

Without letting loose of his oars, Newt leaned forward, eyes closing, and brushed their lips together. His lips were dry, the kiss fond. He leaned back and glanced over his shoulder to get the direction right, then resumed rowing, not quite looking at Hermann, but smiling. 

“You worry too much,” Newt said.

Hermann sat like a lump of wood. They did not often kiss outside of their quarters, and it felt strange to do so beneath the whole bright sky, almost rebellious. He kept thinking of it, brief and chaste, the warmth of Newt’s mouth, and after a while coughed and forced himself to focus back on the map.

The next time Hermann spoke was to say, “It has been half an hour.” Newton led out a breath of relief and shipped the oars, leaning back with a sigh.

“You can get the stroke right?” he said, rubbing idly at his shoulders, which should not have been distracting.

“I am hardly new to this,” Hermann snapped, settling the oars in. He shifted his grip, shifted his stance that the long rowing and sitting might not hurt his leg too badly, making the best he could of a bad position. Then he leaned into rowing. At least this way he did not need to think too much, aside from their direction.

They proceeded this way for nearly three hours before Hermann, taking his turn at the oars, spotted the first speck of black on the horizon. He stopped for just a moment, squinting at it. “Land,” he said, hiding his relief. “We are on the right course.”

“I never doubted it,” Newton said archly, and turned in his seat, wriggling like an excitable child, so as to be able to stare at the small distant island as they approached. “Well, are you going to row or aren’t you?”

“You are impossible,” Hermann muttered, and heaved with a will.

He kept his eyes fixed on the island as he rowed in, a destination, if not one he actively wanted to reach. As they grew closer the island’s shape seemed strange, lumpy. Perhaps five minutes out, the incongruity resolved itself.

The island itself was small, mostly rocky with small patches of sand and a tiny bit of vegetation. Hauled up behind the rocky crag, half resting on it, lay the still body of the winged kaiju, a fallen giant. One wing stretched out and away, fluttering in the sea, tugged at by the tide. Given time perhaps the creature would be torn free from its lodging here and fall back into the deeper seas from whence it came. 

“Fascinating,” Newton breathed.

“You are ghastly,” Hermann said, trying mostly to focus on the island and not its inhabitant.

As they came in closer he leaned back on his bench, leaving the oars now, with relief, as the waves pulled them in. “Be ready to leap ashore, and drag the boat in,” Hermann said. Easier to launch from the sand than attempt to leave it anchored away from the crashing of surf; he would not like to swim out to it. 

“I am ever ready,” Newt said, his eyes fixed on the vast beached beast.

He splashed out into the shallows as they neared, at first hauling the boat behind him and then, when it nearly clocked him in the head, wading around to push from the back. 

Once the boat ground up against sand, Hermann pulled himself up, stretching out the stiffness in his muscles from hours of sitting. He splashed over the side and did his best to join in, panting rather, as Newton pushed the boat up the narrow beach and settled it carefully well above the high tide line.

They had been lucky in their landing place. Here and there were sandy patches like this one, but the majority of the island was dark rock, jagged black, streaked with excrement from the birds that nested here. This time of year the nests were empty, no birds in sight, no living thing indeed in sight for many miles around.

Hauled up amongst the rocks, the dead kaiju rested, leaking blood into the water. Its head was canted in their direction, jaw agape, and it took effort for Hermann to meet its huge blank eye, even in death. Flies already buzzed and crawled there, futilely.

“Blast, her belly lies away from us,” Newton said, pulling his supplies from the boat. “Hermann, will you be able to help as I get at it?”

“Yes,” Hermann said, and took a step. His hip screamed in protest. “… Somewhat.”

Newt tucked the bag under his arm and shot him a smile. “At the least you can carry my things,” he said, managing to say it cheerily enough it wasn’t insulting.

“If it keeps you from slipping and cracking your head,” Hermann said, eyeing the bag with misgivings. He did not like the way it bulged.

Newton laughed at him. “Be careful there, Hermann, one might think you give a damn.”

Hermann did not pale or flush, he did _not_. “Fortunately we are both sensible men, and know better,” Hermann said, stammered really, at his back; Newton had already loped away. 

Hermann kept pace, wrinkling his nose as they came closer to the creature, a tart and acidic stench mixed with the first hints of the rot of decomposition. It was mountainous, huge. “How are you planning to …” Hermann said, and found he did not have any more of the sentence, at all.

Newton rummaged through his bag and pulled out a case, unrolling it to reveal a glittering array of scalpels, vials, knives. He examined them, nodded, tucked the case under his arm.

“Ah,” Hermann said rather queasily. He should have a stronger stomach by now. He mastered himself and said snippily, “And do you happen to have a saw in there?”

Newton stumped through the sand in fine good form. From the ground, nearing the kaiju was like approaching a small mountain, its spined back and laddered wings reminiscent of foothills. “Perhaps if someone hadn’t filled the boat with lemon juice,” Newt said, and rolled up his pant legs and strode into the rock pools.

It was only now, staring up at the steep incline of flesh, rippling with lines of slowly fading light, that Hermann thought to wonder whether Newton’s guess was even correct. No kaiju had ever been seen pregnant, or with young or eggs, and all were different enough from each other that it could only be assumed each was an adult of its kind, with none alike enough to be juvenile forms of another.

They may have rowed hours out of his _Jaeger_ ’s reach to an inhospitable crag of rock for nothing more than a leviathan’s corpse.

Certainly Hermann had seen nothing unusual in the kaiju’s shape or movements, beside every unusual thing. But he had not made the same study of the creatures, at least not before Newton –

The corpse heaved and shuddered, and Hermann took half a step back, staring up at it. If the beast was still alive, she could snap up him and Newt in one mouthful and pick her teeth with the bones. 

Newt had only just vanished around the bulk of her side and could not have made much incision with his small tools yet, to cause the stirring. Indeed here he came back into view, waving his hands overhead, shouting himself hoarse.

“Hurry, hurry the damn thing is birthing itself – a miracle, an inconvenience – sharply, Hermann, who knows what it breathes!” and breathless with excitement Newton rushed past him to plunge into the water near the dead beast’s tail.

Hermann shrugged and made his way after.

Newt was wading then half-swimming through the water, and Hermann winced at the violent blue tinge to the water, surely not healthy. 

In the shallows came a small splash, then again, slow movements. In shallow water near the beached kaiju floated a creature a little smaller than a killer whale. Pallid blue and webbed, it put Hermann more in mind of a frog.

Newton’s awkward front crawl brought him up to the creature, and Hermann took a step out into the shadows in concern: surely Newt should not swim so close to the thing’s head. The baby’s jaws were only the size of Newt’s torso, not a mountain, but that was more than enough to maul him. 

It did not maul him. From what Hermann could see it seemed peaceful, splashing only a little. Newton kept station by its head, seeming to talk into its folded-up ears, ineffectually. He waved his arms about and swam in closer again to talk or look at the thing, held it by the head like a rider handling a startled horse.

Newton kicked forward ahead of the thing, full in the line of its jaw. The baby struggled, splashed, and let out its first call, a plaintive warble too high-pitched for a creature of such size. It got its wings stretched out over the surface of the water eventually, neat as a kite, holding it up, and with a thrash of its tail followed Newt into shore rather like a duckling.

Hermann by this point had stepped back out of the shallows, his boots having kept most of the water out but the bottom of his breeches soaked again. Newt had one hand encouragingly on the creature’s chin, and it trailed behind him, stopping once on dry sand to shake off vigorously, like a dog. It flared out its damp wings briefly, then folded them over its back and sneezed.

Hermann could make out most of the features of the adult kaiju in this tinier specimen, but others were changed. The limbs of the adult were nowhere near so pronounced, its body more serpentine, whereas this seemed almost more quadrupedal. Perhaps they had growth stages …

He had spent too much time around Newton, to be wondering these things. Newt stepped out from in front of the baby kaiju’s head, and it at once lurched after him and bumped its head against his chest, nearly knocking him over. Newton grinned in delight and patted it under the chin.

“At least if it kills you it will probably be by accident,” Hermann said. He took a step back all the same.

Newton gave the creature a good scratch and glanced back at Hermann, lifting his eyebrows. “It’s alright, she’s friendly,” he said. Hermann made a doubtful noise; Newton grinned at him, eyes bright and pleading, face open and happy with none of the strain it had shown these past many weeks and years. Hermann took a step closer.

The creature swung its head towards him, snuffling. Its eyes were big and vague, not quite focusing yet, but the long, trailing organs on its chin, a little like whiskers, stirred and trembled, and it sniffed, sniffed. It lurched a step toward Hermann, flared its wings, and started to growl.

“She is _friendly_ ,” Newton repeated, and stepped quickly between the creature and Hermann, hands held out to it. “Shh, shh, it’s alright, that’s only Hermann, you know Hermann,” and other soothing nonsense, patting the creature and scratching at its chin and even going so far as to lean his head on it and give it half an embrace as he murmured in its ear. 

Gradually the kaiju’s eyes focused, and it cocked its head to look at Hermann. It took another step forward, almost more of a hop, and he braced himself, hand tense on his cane, but it just snuffled at him, long damp antennae trailing uncomfortably over his skin, before it sneezed, and retreated back to lean against Newton.

Newton scratched its chin, looking fond. “There, see, I told you,” he said.

“This comes very intuitively to you, indeed,” Hermann said. “How could you possibly know that she would be here or how she would behave?” He had a sick and certain feeling Newton would not answer him, at least not satisfactorily.

“Brilliance,” Newton said, breezy, and vague. He patted the creature once more then took a step away from it, mouth drooping down a little. The small kaiju keened, and Newt sighed, but rolled up his sleeves. “We must be quick while it is dazed, all placid with the thin air.”

The deep furrow in Newt’s brow had come back, as he unfolded his case full of instruments. The knives gleamed brightly in the sweltering sun. “Quick to do what, exactly, Newton,” Hermann said. 

Newt glanced up at him, but only briefly. He selected a clear glass tube, held it up to the sun with a squint, nodded. “A repeat of my experiment, with some slight variations,” he said, and rolled his sleeve up further, above the elbow. “If you can observe, that would be useful.” Hermann watched, could not quite bring himself to move, as Newton took one of the small blades and made an incision in his skin, just a nick. He placed the blade in a different part of the bag, and continued, “If you need to turn your back and pretend you don’t know me, certainly that would be more to type.”

Hermann winced, watching him. The process was not quite as ghastly as he’d feared. Only the smallest trickle of blood came from Newton’s wound, though still more than he could afford, drained as he was. But he did not connect himself with the kaiju with vials or tubing, at least. No; he lifted one hand, and took hold of one of the trailing barbels, the long thin whisker-like strands of flesh on the young kaiju’s chin. He pulled it free from the others and held it out ready.

Hermann watched speechless: not science, no, not indeed. He was almost more inclined to damn it with the phrase _dark magic_ , because the last time Newton had performed this similar operation, certainly it had delivered results: results in the form of accurate news of the winged beast, coming in to threaten them; results, in the form of Newton pallid and sickly, speaking in words that did not seem his own. He was stranded on an island as his dearest friend performed sorcery.

Newt breathed in deep and looked up at him. “If I die—” he said and then cut himself off, scowling. “No, never mind.”

Hermann had crossed the distance between them before he even knew it, seizing his colleague by the collar. “If you what?” he demanded, and shook him, only a little. “I forbid it. You are certainly not to die.” Newt looked at him flatly, unimpressed by his attempt at a commanding air. Hermann released his collar, smoothed a hand over his jacket, and said, “We … the effort needs you.”

“And it shall have me, the best way I know how,” Newton said, and readied the strand of kaiju. It seemed to glow, almost, to pulse, though with a lesser amount of light than Hermann had seen in adults of the species. “I must do this, Hermann.”

Hermann swallowed, jerked up his chin, and met his gaze, willing Newton to return from whatever distant place inside himself he threatened to retreat to. “Then so must I.”

The amount Newton’s jaw dropped was gratifying. “Truly?” he said, and gulped, and cocked his head to one side then the other, rather like the kaiju had, as if trying to make sense of it. “You’re more dedicated to the cause than even I had known. Alright. Certainly that lessens the risk.” He rested a hand on Hermann’s shoulder, as though all the tension and pain between them was forgotten. “To me. Hermann, it is not safe.”

“War is not safe,” Hermann said, and a little uncertainly took his station on the other side of the baby kaiju’s head. It turned to look at him, barbels swinging, and bumped its head against him briefly, but swayed a little as it turned back; being out in the air must not be very good for it.

“Alright, hold on, impatient man,” Newton said, and fumbled in his kit, his smooth competence cracked a little now. He took out another small knife, and took hold of Hermann’s hand, lifting up his arm. His grip was careful, tender.

He met his gaze steadily. Hermann grimaced at him, and Newt chuckled, making a small cut tinier even than his had been. 

He tucked the knife away, and without seeming to notice he was doing it tossed the whole bag to one side, so it laid half-open in the sand. He gave Hermann a quick nod, not meeting his eyes, and stepped back to the other side of the swaying young kaiju, lifting up his barbel once more.

“Alright,” he said again. “Alright, alright. Be ready on my mark.”

Hermann did not like that they were doing this. Hermann could not let Newton do it alone, all the same. He drowned out his fears by thinking of stars, closing his eyes tight enough they blazed before his vision. He took one of the barbels at random and tugged it; a slight tingling feeling in his fingers, where his skin brushed the bright kaiju skin.

“Three,” Newton said. “Two. One.”

Perhaps a second after Newt did, Hermann placed the creature’s tendril against his skin.

It was so much worse than an electric shock. It was death dyed bright in blue.

He was nothing and everything, a multitude of creatures in an ill-fitting skin. The pressure at this depth was crushing as an enemy, nowhere near as unkind as the cruel sun that burned above, but still, it made them strong, the Makers under the sea and the creatures they Made ( _monsters_ Hermann thought, _kaiju_ ) the servants, the settlers.

Down in the trench and the depths was home, but there was a whole vast sea, and the thin small things that lived up above, burning in the sun’s light, travelling the seas in fragile vessels made of plant material instead of altered flesh, they were slowly learning to fight, to fight each other but they would fight the Makers, if the Makers came up, if they claimed the sea that was their birthright – so fight them first, so send the servants – first one then the other, up and up, and countered every time.

There was always another to take their place, but it was not enough, they would starve if they used all their crop of flesh on these Makings. So. They sent another servant, settler, spy, its serpent-mind bundled up in soft skin that would not burn in the sunlight.

All of these things at once:

This knowledge, these memories, ancient.

The moment he fell from his horse with one foot still caught in the stirrup, a sick second of dread and then a wrench and a _crunch_ of his hip underneath him like breaking in two.

Waking on the shore, salt water lapping at him. That felt right, the sea felt right. His skin was smooth and clear and pale, and that did not feel right. In his mind serpents rolled and played and their colours were like nothing he could see any more.

A boy looking up through a telescope –

Hermann staggered away from the young kaiju, wrenching his arm free of its stinging tendril, and leaned over and was violently sick.

The strange experience had only been a moment; it had been a year, ten years, thirty years. Hermann wiped his mouth and swallowed, and looked up.

Newt stepped away from the kaiju only a moment after he did, and his eyes were bright and strange, and his skin was vivid with welts. When Hermann glanced down at his own arm he saw similar markings, raised red skin in odd square patterns. They were similar to those Raleigh Becket had, or Stacker Pentecost, though less severe. 

These organs caused scars when used offensively. Hermann had not dreamed they had another purpose. Surely they could not have been conceived with this purpose. 

_Conceived_? What was he thinking? But yes, kaiju were created, he knew they were, the same way human farmers grew preferable coffee or maize or beans from base crops, but faster, stranger, and he knew of it, he knew all of it and none of it, too sharp to fit into his head.

He stared at Newt and Newt stared back, and Hermann felt a stirring of memory, under his skin. Knew the memory was not his own. Newt, the man he was in love with, was not a man at all.

They had fought together all these years, and there was still fighting to be done. “We must warn them,” Hermann said, and swallowed again to try and rid the taste of bile and blood from his tongue. He stepped forward to grip urgently at Newton’s sleeve. “There is an organised force we are fighting, not mere nature and malice, this changes everything. We must warn them at once!”

Newton looked at him, his eyes wide and blank. “I can’t let you do that,” he said, sounding like himself, sounding apologetic, and then he brushed Hermann’s hand away and shoved him hard in the chest.

Hermann staggered back, winded, cane barely finding purchase on the sand. “Newton, what – what in the blazes—”

Newton advanced on him, not saying another a word, and the welts on his skin glowed a bright, uncanny blue.

Hermann managed to get his feet under him properly, but to little use: Newton with startling precision punched him again in the stomach, then hard in the throat, and Hermann went down choking, scraping for air.

As Newt advanced Hermann scrabbled back, closing his eyes a bare moment to get his thoughts together: to plan, to win, to live. 

Hermann opened his eyes, and just to buy time he swept his cane under Newton’s legs, causing him to stumble but not fall, blast it. “Newton, listen to me,” he said urgently, hauling himself up as Newt resumed a slow walk toward him. “This is not you. They’re controlling you. But their influence has been only faint these last many years, you can choose—”

Newton struck him again hard and precise, once in the stomach, once further up, to the side, a blinding pain. Then he put both hands around Hermann’s neck, and began to choke.

Hermann gasped out, unable to plan or think beyond the base need to breathe. He scrabbled weakly at his hands, staring into Newt’s eyes.

_Not_ Newton. Hermann refused to believe this was him. This impostor in his old friend’s skin would kill him, all the same.

“Newt,” he gasped out, wordless, and heaved, heaved at his hands with all his strength, and managed to make some breathing room, half an inch between the fingers trying to choke the life out of him. “Newt, stop.”

Newt did not even shake his head, no response at all. If this was really the man he’d known, if Newton had been deliberately in disguise all these long years, he would certainly be taunting him and crowing right now.

Hermann almost wished he would. If he were to die here, those damn Makers could at least let him say goodbye.

Newton’s fingers drew in tight again, and with the last of his air Hermann said, “I always thought I would love you forever, I’d just started to think that might be longer than this.”

No change in Newt’s expression or his bright bright eyes. His grip was hard and merciless, not an inch more pressure applied than needed to be. Hermann’s lungs dragged at him terribly, like knives in his chest, knives in his hip, in his heart, and his vision went black and swarming.

Newton released him and Hermann swayed, gasping, still too weak to fight back. Newt walked a metre or two and picked up his fallen bag, and drew one of the bloodied knives. 

Of all things to notice: there were bandages in there too, pills, medicines. His masters surely could not have purposefully made him bring his doctor’s kit, not the supplies for everyday human wounds. They were not controlling him all the time. A strong impulse Newton never questioned.

This would not help but Hermann gripped his cane tight, anyway, and spat at him, “Fool. Coward!”

The glowing in Newton’s welts had ebbed a little, but his eyes were flooded with blue, thick and uncanny, bright and shiny like pearls. He flicked the knife in his hand once or twice and stepped forward.

Hermann let his leg crumple beneath him, send him graceless and painful to the ground. “My lung feels wet,” he said almost nonsensically, and then bit down on his tongue hard. The blood flooded his mouth.

As Newton advanced, Hermann curled up in the dirt and coughed, which was not hard, with the ache in his chest, he coughed and spat so he seemed to cough the blood out, violently red on the sand.

With his eyes half-closed he saw Newton’s boots crunch into the sand in front of him, his legs. Saw him stand there for a moment, two. Hermann spat out a feeble mouthful and let his head lean forward, pressing to the dirt, as his body was wracked with coughs.

Newton knelt down beside him, and a hand touched very lightly to his shoulder. “Your lung?” Newton said. He sounded a little uncertain. Not quite himself. Slow, groggy. “Let me see; let me listen to your breathing.”

“You _doctor_ ,” Hermann breathed, and embraced him.

After a moment Newton hugged him back, resting an awkward hand on his back, and Hermann held him tight.

Just that, for now, he just held him and ignored the young monstrosity on the island with them, ignored the fact it was a monstrosity he held, ignored how very far away they were from their friends fighting and falling to what they did not know was an intelligent enemy.


	9. Chapter 9

The kaiju were more dangerous than ever imagined, weapons at the command of an intelligent and malevolent force. Their friends could be falling in battle right now, but on this deserted island Hermann felt so far away. The important thing was Newton, leaning silently into his shoulder, head tilted against his skin.

Newton’s shoulders shook once. Hermann rubbed at his back, brief and soothing, and Newton tore himself away, suddenly, staggering back. He stared out to sea. The ocean was deep blue, the sky clear, with no hint of the battle even now raging.

Herman and Newton sat quietly in the sand.

Newton rubbed his bare arm over his face and sniffed. “I think you said some very unkind things just now,” he said. His voice only just sounded like his own. 

“Less than you deserve,” Hermann said. He stretched his leg out and rubbed absently at his thigh. “I have been trying to make you _think_ for years beyond years.” He did not like to think of how many questions could have been answered earlier if Newton had examined his own mind with one half of the intense focus he turned on his experiments; but perhaps the betrayal would have come sooner, if he had.

Newton knelt, rolling his sleeves back down over his tattooed and bloodied arms. “I think I … I think I do not like to think of it,” he said, slow and thickly. “I do not remember—” He waved vaguely at the sea. “ _Before_ , the time before I washed up, but it was not good. I was very lonely, you know. Before my family, and you.”

Hermann swallowed the sharp prickle in his throat. Enough time for his feelings later; they were not the matter at hand. “But do you know now, what you are?”

Newton looked at him, and then closed his eyes and hunched up and started to weep, a tinge of blue to it. The tears hissed a little as they crested down his skin, leaving faint burnt trails, but his eyes slowly cleared again until there were whites in his eyes again, and the iris a human muddy hazel.

Newton wiped his face, then shook his head. “I have not the faintest idea,” he said. Behind them, the young kaiju staggered once and folded to the ground in a torpor, head pillowed against the sand and wings folded, eyes blinking occasionally. Newton grimaced as if in fellow-feeling, and looked at Hermann, quick, vulnerable. “Do you?”

Hermann tapped the side of his forehead. “I got a little of it, but I doubt I have the physiology to understand as well as you could.”

Newton shook his head, fast, then slower, wincing. Hermann’s head felt fit to burst, now he thought of it. He was too used to headaches to have noticed at first, in all the rush and the blood, and Newton attacking him. “Hermann,” Newton said, more vulnerable still, like a fish belly-up in the water. “What _am_ I?”

“Infuriating,” Hermann said instantly. He did not have to give much thought to the rest of it, either. “Nowhere near as brilliant as you think you are and nowhere near as rigorous as your work deserves. Persistently loud.”

Newton laughed, annoyed, familiar, and Hermann sat up a little straighter. He rubbed idly at his head, trying to work the ache out. Newt said, “But am I … human?”

“Who cares?” Hermann countered.

Newton blinked at him, then laughed. He stood up at last, sand on the legs of his breeches, and held a hand out to Hermann. “You should,” he said. “I nearly – Hermann, I nearly hurt you—”

Hermann took his hand, though the work of levering himself to his feet seemed a great trial, right then. “You have hurt me worse before,” Hermann said before he thought better of it. Newton gave him a wide, frightened look though, so Hermann dusted the sand off and elaborated, “Emotionally. A _hem_. It does not matter.”

“Of course it matters, it all matters, you matter,” Newton said, and his phrasing was similar enough to Hermann’s grim contemplation a while ago now that Hermann lapsed into silence. 

Newton looked him up and down and grimaced, and stepped away. Hermann took half a step after him, then realised how that must look, trailing behind him like a lost duckling. He halted. 

Newt scowled and glanced away, thumbs in his bracers. “I always scare you off when I talk too freely,” he said.

Hermann’s jaw dropped. “I? You are the one who becomes volatile and hides behind jokes when I threaten to – what was it? _Give a damn_.”

“No,” Newton said, disagreeably. 

“Yes,” Hermann said, and did step closer now as his voice cracked with anger. “You scorn my poor attempts at closeness before I can even commit to them, so that of course I am frightened to speak of – if I feel, how I feel, of baring myself before your mockery. Constantly you deride the accidents and times I could not help but show some of the fondness I feel for you as though it were the worst thing in the world!”

Newton’s hands balled into fists, and Hermann recognised with slight relief that he was no longer frightened of him; this was within the bounds of their usual arguments, a little rawer, but free of interference. “You’re the one who acted like it was!” Newton said. “You’re the one who was so disappointed when we first met, like I could never match up to the perfect Dr Geiszler from our letters. A disappointment from the moment I first spoke and every second since, and you could never let me forget it.” 

Hermann swallowed hard on the ball of pain and misery and guilt in his throat. He took a step back slowly, letting his shoulders ease, letting some of the anger pass by him. He held up one hand in a placating gesture. The right words were hard to come by; he grasped for any. “I never asked you to be perfect.”

Newton’s shoulders bowed down, rounded, slumped, unhappy. Devoid of the momentary anger he looked once more what he was, a lost man. Yet he was still so ferociously himself, so ferociously alive, and Hermann did not, could not think of where he would be now if Newton were not still alive.

“I just wanted,” Hermann said, “I merely wanted – You kept the map. I wanted it to mean something.” He looked at him helplessly, the two of them alone out here, and all their work come to nothing. “I wanted it to mean something,” Hermann repeated. 

“A researcher must take cares not to let his own desires form a bias,” Newton said, but very quietly. For a moment he extended his hand in the space between them, then let it fall once more to his side. Hermann rubbed his fingers together restlessly. 

This did not seem so bad now they had faced so much worse, and were still together in a manner of speaking. “It felt I was stalled any time I thought I was making progress," Hermann said slowly. “With you and with my work.” He glanced briefly at the kaiju, collapsed on the ground and blinking slower now, twitching its wings only occasionally. He pulled his eyes away and rested them on Newton, where his gaze always rested if he was not careful, the first one he looked for in a room. “Our work, I thought, but …”

“Our work,” Newton said, a little leadenly. “I may be a snake in the grass, but it was not intentional. I had no idea I was driven by anything other than sincere desire to fight the … the creatures I suppose might be all but cousins to me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Hermann said reflexively. Newton smiled. 

“I know what you mean, I think,” Newton said and frowned. “It’s hard to see, like looking through mist at sea. You speak of when you made your breakthrough, after I bought you – after you got the globe.”

“Oh, so now you’ll believe it was a breakthrough,” Hermann said, snappish, and then realised quite how exactly he sounded like Newton complaining in his sickbed, and fell embarrassedly silent.

Newton did not mock him for it, this once. “I was angry – they were angry,” he said. “You were getting too close. They’re afraid of you, you know.”

“Afraid of me?” Hermann said, truly startled. “Why?”

Newton smiled at him true and warm and bright, his big smile with all his teeth showing and his eyes wrinkling up, and said, “Because I know what you’re capable of, of course.”

Hermann clenched both hands tight on his cane, and breathed in raggedly as he looked at him. “I love you frantically,” he said, fast. It was not so frightening if he said it quickly, if he tried not to focus on the slow shift in Newt’s expression. “I should have told you the minute we first met. I should have told you every minute since regular as a clock.”

Newton stared at him, then held out his hand in the space between them, palm out, open. Hermann didn’t move. Couldn’t. Newt frowned at him, and then blinked as if something occurred to him and said, “Oh. I’ve loved you since you tore apart my poor argument about the influence of currents.”

Hermann’s mind clicked through the calculations, and the recollection made him huff out a breath like he’d been hit. That exchange had been a year into their correspondence. Only a year, and they had known each other now for nearly nine.

“Oh …” Hermann breathed, standing there etched with welts, aching and alone and unarmed against a vast unstoppable force. He gripped Newton’s hand tight, his own fingers shaking slightly; held it, warm within his own. “I am the luckiest man in all this existence.”

“That seems unlikely, but—”

Hermann tilted forward just enough to wrap an arm awkward around Newton’s shoulders, and this time Newt gripped him back, hard, one arm around his waist and the other over his shoulder, rubbing at his back, holding him tight, leaning into his shoulder so Hermann could press his cheek against the other man’s hair and just hold him.

“This is good,” Newt said, quietly, after nowhere near long enough. “But—”

“I fear indeed our friends may be dying,” Hermann said, just a little strained. He drew back, though he leaned his cane against one leg and held both of Newton’s hands in his own simply for the fact he could. Short stubby fingers, with some blood under the nails; dear and familiar. “There will be time for this later, if the world has not ended.” He added, “There will especially be time if we are trapped here,” which he had nearly forgotten. 

“Hardly trapped,” Newt replied, as though he had not thought of it at all. He pulled his hand free to wave at the boat, safely above the tideline.

Hermann’s chest stabbed at him with each breath he took, though he tried not to think about it. “I cannot,” he said, trying to say it simply, to feel no unworthiness in the admission when after all it was hardly his fault Newton had bruised him so soundly. “Can you bring us all that way?”

Newt shook his head quietly, then paused. “I have a thought, perhaps a little unlikely,” he said, and looked at the young kaiju, small-whale-sized, beached and gasping. “I believe I can control her, perhaps, given time. And then, well, she could tow us.” He did not quite look Hermann in the eye as he said this, dropping his hand. Hermann waited until Newton at last turned to him, so Hermann could unleash on him a look of withering disbelief. Newton just grinned in response, though, looking besotted, which was disarming.

So this former traitor thought himself a trainer of leviathans; well enough. “But then what?” Hermann said. “What is to be done when we are there, just two more bodies against those – those war engines?” There was no better way to describe the kaiju, now, knowing their origin. They were less like a wild dog and more like a sharpened knife.

Newt’s look faded once more into one of bleakness. He rubbed idly at his wrist and sucked on his lip. “I don’t know, but we have to do something,” he said, and winced, flinched. “The, the Makers, the precursors. You saw them too, yes?”

“Yes,” Hermann said. “Yes.” He wished he hadn’t.

Newton gave him a look of flung-open devastation. “Then they saw us,” he said. “They’ll know we know. They’ll … I don’t know what they’ll do.” He glanced at the creature, its trailing barbels. 

“Do _not_ ,” Hermann said sharply. He had to admit he was a little relieved to hear Newton was not able to comprehend the alien thinking of their foes. 

Newton rubbed at his eye, blinked rapidly. It was starting to look bloodshot. “I have an idea, simply to buy us time, to buy them some time,” Newton said. “To let us get there, to swing the fight in our favour. I think. You will laugh at me.”

“I promise to laugh at you only when you deserve it,” Hermann said, and cleared his throat awkwardly. Even the smallest things he said felt like confessions, after all these years of trying to hide his affection many miles down. Newton gave him a quick little smile, thrilled, unsure.

“They know you,” Newton said, and flushed a very little. “Through me. They know your mind, and they’re afraid of you.”

He stopped then and waited, expectantly. Hermann gripped his cane and glanced around the deserted island, miles from anything. He barely even had any maps. “Alright,” he said. He did not feel quite as vulnerable and flayed as when talking of his feelings for Newton, but the feeling of being awkwardly exposed was the same. “I am a formidable foe, to be sure.” He jerked his mouth down in one corner.

Newt sighed. “I am, too, but they think they can still control me, I think,” he said, and rushed on past. “Think less of what you are capable of now but what you will be capable of later, over the whole of your life, the potential. Would you, we, humans, construct machines to dive down and take the battle to them? Perhaps drag them out of their depths and up into the air where they are brittle things, and see how well they fight their own battles? Or if I learned to train kaiju, steal their weapons and send them right back down. If we made weapons that could bear poisons into their homes – any of this, all of this, could we do it? Envision a way to fight, now we know our foes, and build it?”

Hermann’s mind sparked, turned. “Yes,” he said, and then, slower, “Yes, but the cost of life would be unimaginable, in the meantime, to turn our resources towards this when thousands of lives are at stake every day.”

“But you could do it, there is possibility,” Newton said, and Hermann frowned at him. He was unsure where this was going and very sure he did not like it. All the same, any hope was something to clutch at.

“Yes,” Hermann said, and gave in and let himself be prideful, just this once. “I could certainly do it.”

Newton nodded, quick, and said, “So I think we should hit them with that, as hard as we can.”

“With possibilities,” Hermann said, struggling to understand, and Newton nodded: yes. “You would go down with me?”

“It lessens the risk,” Newton said, meaning, again, yes.

Hermann glanced again at the kaiju, who they should get to water, soon, if they could bear the chance of losing it to the expanse of the sea, but who would live a little longer. They would live just a little longer. He would do anything, that the people he cared about would live a little longer; even Newton’s madcap plan, and the worst thing was that it nearly made sense to him.

It was risky to do this again when his head still ached and pounded. There was a chance this was still a controlled creature, not his Newton at all but an abyssal monster’s puppet.

The chance was not insignificant. He calculated that the risk was worthwhile. 

“Once more,” Hermann said, with a churn in his stomach, and he shook Newton’s hand, because it felt the thing to do.

This time they connected the trailing tendrils direct to their temples. Newton crouched in the sand by the prone young kaiju, and Hermann stood leaned over because it was easier, and he would not want to try to get up again if he sat down now. Newton wiped his hands clean, then lifted one barbel, holding it to his forehead without quite making contact. He passed Hermann another. 

Hermann took it gingerly, leaning some of his weight on Newton, one hand on his shoulder. They did not count down, this time. They did not need to, their breathing settling into sync and their motions almost inevitable as they lifted the tendrils to their minds.

The theory of electricity; was this how early humans had felt when first taming fires, this mix of fear and bravado, to know that if one died it was on the altar of Progress?

If he died it was by the side of his dearest friend.

“Hermann,” Newt said quietly, and then they were in once more.

At first it was all a muddle again, all a mess, and overwhelming. Hermann could feel the building ache in his own head, budding, growing, and traced that back to him, found himself: the collection of aches and irritations and hopes and small joys that formed a person Hermann Gottlieb scholar scientist sailor.

From him he could find Newton, kneeling next to him, _feel_ him feel the grit of the sand under his knees and the fear he had mostly kept hidden that he was asking too much of Hermann, that he would be loved at last only to risk losing him.

Hermann squeezed his shoulder, and cast his mind further afield.

The thoughts of the young monster were quiet and slow. It was barely formed, as of yet, its mind still growing, memories quick and blurred. Hermann’s eyelids blazed with the warm colours of kaiju insides. He shifted aside, moving, looking. Not this but something like this.

Far out to sea, a servant swimming. A monster all crushing jaws and steady fins, vast as mountains, a servant, swimming, hungry not with appetite but the pressing need of orders: it must catch the brittle ships within its jaws, where the last servants had failed but it would not fail, smash the ships into nothing and kill the small creatures inside that they could not dive down and be a threat to the Masters the Makers the precursors –

For just a moment: far under the sea. Scuttling and crushed-strange. Hermann’s consciousness juddered up against the edges of an intelligence alien to his own, all sharp edges and colours he could not name.

Newt was there, a blue light blazing. Newt was there, warm under his hand.

Hermann probed cautiously at the edges of the alien mind, this creature giving orders to a poor dumb beast of slaughter, and then _shattered_ it.

With withering precision he unleashed his every equation. He took every pain he had ever felt and sharpened it to a compass-point and pinned the centre of the other creature’s mind and punctured it, down below at those depths, and let the weakness in –

Up in the sunlight waters the servant faltered and pulled back, crying in pain, as the burning metal from the small ships dug into its flesh, crying in pain as its Maker screamed out in the link they shared they _all_ shared in anguish –

_You are right to be scared_ , Hermann thought, as savagely and precisely as he could, and in case the Makers did not think in words as humans did he formed a picture in his mind and sent that: plans, schematics dancing before his eyes all so very familiar, the suits and diving ships and spheres, and the harpoons and the cannon and the gunpowder and guns. The resolve, deep down, that had been with him since his first news of kaiju attack, the grim heartbroken resolve upon which he could always rely: that he would not stop and could not stop, if even a single other person he knew was hurt –

He was distracted, then, thinking of what they had done to Newton, what a torn creature they had made of him, and rage built up in his stomach – use that, use it – so he thought of Newton and the young creature currently sharing their minds, and what it could grow into, what they could all grow into, pilots perhaps or merely instructors sending the beasts swimming down and down to fight back, the fact they would fight back, the fact they had not struck the first blow but had now been so grievously wounded that as long as the battle waged they would _never stop fighting_.

The pain in his mind was nearly transcendent, pulsing like a star, and Newton’s shoulder drifted out from under his grip. Hermann blinked hard and fast and pulled himself out of the link while he still could.

He staggered back, but managed to keep his footing this time. Newton was not so lucky, keeled over in the sand. “Newt,” Hermann said sharply, tasting blood in his mouth with regrettable familiarity. He brought his cane down quickly and decisively on the thin tendril near Newton’s forehead, breaking the connection.

Newt gulped in air, fingers digging into the sand. A relief. The kaiju made a small noise Hermann was not sure how to categorise, a kind of plaintive glumph, and lifted its head enough to stare up at him with one large eye.

“Do not look at me like that. We shall attend to you now,” Hermann said, like he was talking to a farm cat. He fell silent, embarrassed.

“Yes, we shall, you precious thing,” Newton cooed, and heaved himself up to sit. He grinned at Hermann delightedly. “There, I knew you could do it.”

“I am not entirely sure I have done _anything_ ,” Hermann said, but he felt it, too. He knew they had dealt the enemy a blow, or at least made them stop and take thought. That creature, the kaiju whose mind he had found and followed to its master; he was fairly sure he had managed to stop it from attacking the _Jaeger_ and her accompanying ships, and he had not seen any other kaiju still alive there. Perhaps they were safe at last, safe for now.

Perhaps safe for ever; a thin hope, but worth clinging to, always worth factoring in as a possibility. 

Newton stood up, leaning casually on the kaiju for balance as though it did not have teeth the size of his hands. “Let’s get you into the water, then, and you can breathe a little before we bring the boat in,” he said, encouragingly, and the kaiju bumped its head against his hand, and – shifted, a little, wriggled its weight as much as it seemed able to in its current weakened state, clearly cooperating with his intentions.

Had he been doing this, while staying resolute beside Hermann’s consciousness and aiding him in his section of the fight; exploring this creature’s mind, forming a bond with it in order to train and talk with it? What a wonder. Hermann smiled at Newt’s back, and took up his station to help push the creature back into the sea, where hopefully it would not kill them all.

None of this was precisely scientific, but he could examine it all and observe and notate it all, in length – later.

The young thing made a joyous call in the back of its throat as it reached the water, and once the front half of its body was submerged it wriggled quickly and decisively, tail splashing water, and dove underneath. It re-emerged not more than two metres away, and flapped its wings once or twice against the surface of the water, then seemed content to float there, chin on the surface of the water, watching them.

“Now the boat,” Newton said, panting rather. He was very damp.

Hermann wiped off the front of his breeches, in vain. A little water would not hurt them. “Ropes first, perhaps, if we can rig some sort of harness or tow-rope,” he said, and Newton squinted at him.

“Did you bring ropes?” he said doubtfully, and Hermann did not even answer him ducked his head to rummage in the boat, moving aside the cask of lemon juice, the dry biscuit, the spare bandages – there. He lifted up the coil of rope in silent triumph.

Newton placed one hand on the rope and the other on his chin, leaning forward to kiss him briefly but passionately. His mouth tasted terrible, the scratch of his stubble distracting. A wonder.

They formed a simple loop of rope for the creature to grip at one end, and fixed the other to the bow and then settled themselves in. The kaiju dived under the water once and resurfaced with a flash of its tail, frolicking, and then gripped the loop and surged forward with a will; and they were sailing, or something like sailing, through the waves and then out into open sea, fast, fast towards their friends. With every second that passed at this extraordinary speed there seemed better cause to hope that the impossible may be possible after all, that they may win.

The sails ahead of them grew rapidly larger and resolved into ships, the _Scrapper_ still afloat and the _Czernobog_ there but foundering low in the water from the weight of half the _Typhoon_ ’s guns and crew. As they slowed to approach the dear shape of the _Jaeger_ a crowd of faces peered down from the deck, a veritable army of hands reaching out to help them aboard, Mako and Becket and Tendo and all the crew, bloodied but alive, and victorious.


	10. Chapter 10

There had been no attacks for four months, and if the kaiju came again the world stood ready. Though the Fleet was disbanded it could reunite at the least inclination, swift ships standing by at most harbours ready to dart off quick as an arrow with news of any sightings. But it had been four months since any Fleet ships were lost, the _Striker_ and _Typhoon_ in that final frantic battle, four months since a new sighting, four months to rest and recover and rebuild.

Hermann had his office back in the _Jaeger_ , his own small room to work from. He kept many maps and charts therein, his navigation case and long-glass and Gunter scale and a present from the admiral, a fine new book of printed map gores to piece together into a globe. Occasionally, he even did some work there. 

More often he would tuck the papers he needed under his arm and make his way down the corridor, huffing at the inconvenience, to settle in at his desk in Newton’s surgery with his own small bronze globe and Newt’s familiar chatter without which he could not seem to get any work done.

He had worked late there this afternoon, continuing his journal of the experiences that had led to the seeming end or at least ceasefire of this war of theirs. The last gulp of coffee in his mug was cold, and he gulped it then made his way on-deck; Newton ought to be nearly done, by now.

Besides the _Jaeger_ swam a veritable monster, the small kaiju they had connected with on the nameless island grown now to half the size of the ship. Still growing, Newton had pronounced that morning when measuring her toenails of all things. She swam peaceably with just an occasional twitch of her long tail to keep up with the slow pace of the ship, wings held out to keep her buoyed on the surface.

Nearby Newton splashed and frolicked cheerfully, very obviously nowhere near as made for the water as this creature was. He insisted on making a fool of himself; Hermann had not tried to stop him.

Newt’s excuse was that he was carrying on his studies and training while in the water, which was nominally believable. Even now as he had to kick quite hard to keep up, he would flail his limbs at the kaiju, or shout at her or attempt a kind of high-pitched chitter.

She blinked her vast eye at him indulgently or occasionally screamed in return, a practice the crew of the _Jaeger_ took great objection to but could not make Newton make her stop.

They had not succeeded at getting Hermann to intervene to stop the uncanny noise either, or any of the rest of the creature’s disconcerting habits. Though he was loathe to admit it, he was fond of the hideous young thing. Her screeches, glowing stripes and long teeth were starting to seem endearing. 

The kaiju flipped one wing a very little, cascading Newt with water. He resurfaced after only a moment, looking delighted about it. Hermann stood watching them, making sure to wear his most wearied expression, and comfortably certain no one at all was fooled.

After a few minutes Newt swam closer to the ship, and waved up at Hermann. “Join me!” Newton hollered. “The water’s awful!”

Hermann eyed the steep curve of the ship’s hull with misgivings. “Perhaps next time we are on shore, joy,” he called down.

Newt gave him a delighted look, so of course the mere possibility had been transfigured, within the peculiar workings of Newt’s mind, into a promise. Hermann sighed.

Newt, treading water, turned and let out one of those awful strings of high-pitched chitters. The kaiju blinked at him, then vanished under the water for a moment, to re-emerge with her head directly under him. Newt crouched, balancing carefully, as his odd charge extended her neck up slow and careful to let him close enough to the boat for him to scramble aboard.

Newton gave a quick shake to get most of the water off, then fetched up his shirt absentmindedly, rubbing himself with it vaguely and succeeding more in making the garment wet than himself dry. Hermann watched him peaceably. “She will be starving,” he said after a moment. By and large Newton was very good at taking care of his creature, but he often forgot he himself needed food and so forgot others did by extension.

Newt nodded and turned to the kaiju, her head still up and watching them. This side of the deck was notably empty of sailors, right now. “Polly!” Newton hollered at her, and waved his arm in the signal they’d worked on. The signals were difficult when Newton was so inclined to wave his arms quite senselessly all the time in any case. “Go kill something!”

The phrasing could perhaps do to be a little less alarming, but it was fortunate Polaris was capable of hunting for herself. The sheer poundage of food she required was far beyond what the _Jaeger_ could carry or procure on a daily basis, especially with how far they were going. 

Polly gave an eager chirp like a cat, swam back nowhere near far enough, and lifted her great wings out of the water, beat them once, twice, again, water shedding off and misting over the ship, body heaving up, until at last she was airborne. She glided overhead, a shadow so familiar Hermann no longer flinched at it, and off and away to starboard.

Newton pawed at Hermann’s vest eagerly, and Hermann sighed and fetched out his short night-glass that Newton didn’t disorder him too much in looking for it. Newton snatched it from his hand and trained it eagerly on their vanishing beast.

“Her flight really is like no other living class of creature,” Newton said.

Hermann said, “You know, I could buy you your own sea-glass if it would stop you from always borrowing mine.”

Newt elbowed him without looking away from the speck that was Polaris. “But first I must buy you a proper telescope, on a nice hill somewhere,” Newt said as if this was not at all extravagant, and Hermann gaped at him lost for words. 

He opened his mouth and closed it, turning aside. He was better now at saying what he felt, but not when they were in earshot of so many. Tendo, standing comfortably at the helm, waved to get his attention and then gave a big encouraging smile and a gesture Hermann was not sure he wanted to understand. Hermann scowled at him.

Many things had changed and some had not. Many crew had stayed and some had not. Midshipman Namani had left them for Jacob Pentecost’s ‘pirate crew’, and never mind how carefully anyone explained privateers to her. The young would always be reckless. There was a higher chance, nowadays, that recklessness would not lead inevitably to their death. 

Others of the crew had taken the chance for a peaceful life on land, now that their service was no longer demanded by honour. And some had stayed, to do a different kind of research – it made him happy, this single small thing, the fact the _Jaeger_ was a research ship once more.

The prospect of sailing a circle around the Earth was less intimidating when one had an accompanying beast that could always fly a few crewmembers to go fetch aid if needed. And she kept Newton busy, which was good, their two lifeworks twining seamlessly together. The fact after all these years the two of them had made an alloy …

Many things made him happy, these days. He was unused to it. The feeling was similar to his first weeks at sea when the deck seemed always to pitch and yaw beneath him, unstable and like to make him trip: he did not yet have his sea legs for happiness.

Newton lowered the glass after a while, and Hermann took it to get one last glimpse of what was to their knowledge the last kaiju, and the only one who had caused no fatalities.

He did not know what it was about her flight that was so remarkable, or the shape of her nails or formation of her teeth or any of the other things Newton could talk on and on about with endless delight. He did enjoy the markings on her skin, faintly glowing when the light was dim; she appeared as if speckled lightly with stars, but no recognisable constellation. He was not even sure their Polaris had been intentionally placed by the Makers or whether she was a result of whatever the wild nature of kaiju was reasserting itself over their careful construction. 

Or perhaps she had been intended, and sent, to lure Newton away from the other ships or to lure the ships away from safety, to activate his latent instincts. Perhaps the plan had been for Newton or both of them to die and lie bloodied in the sand of that little island. It was impossible to tell. Hermann had recorded most of it in his journal and still relived it some nights, playing behind his eyelids in slow and discomforting dreams.

Newton was prone to nightmares as well, still, always. Newton would wake him shouting hoarsely in the night, or wake him from nightmares with a hand on his shoulder. They would hold each other, or Hermann would tell childhood stories he’d nearly forgotten, or Newton would talk about toenails and finger-bones and the possible nature of Polly’s vertebrae, and a kinder sleep would eventually find them. 

Hermann tucked the glass into his jacket, and glanced over at Newton, who was smiling at him now, soft and fond, quite similar to how he had smiled at their very large leviathan.

“I should put this in my room, and give it a proper cleaning,” Hermann said.

“Mm,” Newton agreed, slow and lazy, and took his arm as they walked back down off the deck, toward their rooms. Once they were below deck and a little more alone, Newt added, “I would be happy to polish your telescope.”

Hermann sighed to try and hide his flush. “You would be sure to scratch the lens,” he said, and Newt laughed, high and wheezing. 

“You ridiculous thing!” he said.

“Nuisance,” Hermann returned, and Newton smiled at him, warm and comfortable, held Hermann’s arm as he opened the door not because Hermann needed him to do those things but because it was comfortable and he wanted to, an alien and familiar presence at his side as they both found their footing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you accidentally write a Pacific Rim sailing-ship novel and that's just how it goes, I guess?
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me <3


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